


A Shared Orbit

by coolkidroland



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Background Caspar/Linhardt/Dorothea, Background Dorothea/Petra, Background Edelgard/Byleth, Black Eagle House, Edelgard route, Gender Neutral Byleth, M/M, Minor Character Death, Slow Burn, a dartboard of interpersonal relationships while two grown men fail to get their act together, canon adjacent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 16:37:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20212924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coolkidroland/pseuds/coolkidroland
Summary: Love, like war, is a heady and confusing thing. Ferdinand and Hubert fumble their way through.





	1. Of Family

**Author's Note:**

> "And now kiss," I said during Ferdinand and Hubert's C support as a funny joke, little knowing what the gifts the game was going to give me. This is all set in and around the canon chapters and supports.
> 
> Canon-normal character death and semi-graphic descriptions of war and violence.
> 
> Alternate titles proposed by my wife: The Taming of the Shrewd. Romancing the Grand Vizier. An Indecent Proposal.

**Ethereal Moon**

When the professor reenters their lives without much in the way of a flourish, explanation, or even a bit of informative commentary, it puts Hubert on edge. Everyone knows Hubert is on edge because, like rabbits who have made their home at the mouth of the lion’s den, they’ve grown attuned to such things. And Dorothea points it out to Ferdinand. With that starting point established, Ferdinand is able to place Hubert somewhere between awestruck and heart broken. The poor man doesn’t know what to do with the center of Edelgard’s universe, not after they were gone for so long.

That’s exactly the odd sort of thing that happens to a person when you spend their entire childhood telling them to throw themselves on a sword for one specific other child. Ferdinand remarks as much to Caspar and Linhardt one day, while he and Caspar are resting from sparring and Linhardt is lying off in the grass, book over his face as he pretends to sleep.

Ferdinand knows he is pretending because he says, muffled into the pages: “You’re one to accuse another fellow of being odd.”

“I am not odd,” Ferdinand protests, which earns him a dubious sort of look from overtop the book’s cover. He turns to Caspar. “Tell him I am not odd.”

Caspar raises a hand and waggles it back and forth. “Ehn. Little bit there, buddy.”

“Is this the reward I’ve earned for being your faithful training partner?”

“Honesty is important in relationships, or so I hear.” Caspar gives him a bracing pat on the shoulder. “Look, you and Hubert are both just…intense, that’s all. Edelgard too. It’s not a bad thing, other than Lin over here thinks he needs to be enough of a slacker to even things out.”

“Just doing my part to bring balance to the world, as Her Majesty wishes,” Lin says, his voice going sing-song with mockery Ferdinand doesn’t think is directed at him.

Ferdinand frowns. “I do not think I am intense.”

“You are so intense, my man. But don’t worry about it. Unlike Hubert, I can tell you to cool it without worrying that you’re going to eat me.”

“I doubt Hubert has turned to cannibalism, even in these trying times. Come, I am good for one more round.”

“That’s what I like to hear!”

Linhardt grumbles something into his book that Ferdinand doesn’t catch. 

* * *

It is a consequence of their roles that Ferdinand and Hubert are often in proximity. Oftentimes, Ferdinand finds himself awake at some terrible, inhuman hour, trying to keep his posture straight and war-table-worthy while they stare at the same map they have been staring at for five long years. They have wrought no changes, but still they bull forward. And now there is a fourth, and Byleth lays out strategy with unthinking authority. Of course no one has questioned them before, and of course no one will question them now. Ferdinand admires the steel in them, though from an adult perspective it seems much less…deliberate than it had, five years ago.

And from an adult perspective, there is something about the way Edelgard follows them willingly out of the room before even midnight has struck. It brings a flush to Ferdinand’s cheeks despite himself, though he does not think that they — not at present, at least, but —

Hubert remains. He has the face of a man who has looked upon the goddess and not liked it very much. He also has the face of a man who would willingly devour his enemy’s beating hearts, which Ferdinand thinks is perhaps how Hubert experiences negative emotion in general.

He is compelled to — help?

“Do you think the supply routes will hold for a month longer?” He asks, though this question has been asked and answered several times over in increasingly fretful tones. 

“They must,” says Hubert, like that’s that. 

Edelgard wants it, and Byleth wills it, so they must. 

“And the soldiers?”

Hubert turns that heart-devouring look right now him, trying to make a liar out of Ferdinand’s reassurance to Caspar. “Are you going to sit there all night asking questions you’ve already heard the answers to?”

“I do not know,” says Ferdinand, and then keeps right on saying things: “Are you going to sit there all night sulking?”

He has been spending overmuch time with Linhardt, perhaps. 

Hubert possesses a countenance born for glowering, and he brings all its talents to bear. “Someone with sense has to go over these plans, and it’s hardly going to be you. I suggest you leave me to it.”

“The plans are sensible. You have already agreed to that much.”

“You would trust our lives to a single review?”

There is an argument brewing. Ferdinand can taste it in the room like lightning on the wind. And while he does not doubt that he is correct, he does wonder what his victory spoils would be. Hubert, agreeing to have a soothing cup of chamomile tea and tuck himself into bed? Certainly not. Misdirected tempers, more likely. 

He pulls one of the more detailed territory maps over to him. Many hands make light work, after all.

**Guardian Moon**

They are victorious on the bridge. Ferdinand tries to keep a firm hold on this thought, to give it pride of place at the center of his mind. For the first time in five years they are not simply holding, or waiting, or planning. They are doing, and they have done well. He manages it through the journey home, through the small celebratory dinner, all the way back to his room.

And then, as if uncaged by solitude, another thought wriggles to forefront: _Ah,_ he thinks. _Ah, I killed Leonie._

She had an arrow nocked and aimed for Bernadetta. He wasn’t thinking of anything but that when he slid his lance between her ribs, up under her leather armor, and threw her screaming from her horse. A maneuver he has trained for and practiced a thousand-thousand times, which he has used to kill a good number of people whose faces he never knew. 

He tries to remember something specific about her. It feels cruel that he cannot. He knows only name, face, and house. Somehow, that has privileged her.

There was another student on the bridge with Judith. Ignatz, who he also did not know. He only learns that Ignatz fell to Caspar when Dorothea knocks on his door, one bottle of wine tucked under an arm and the other held out to him when he answers. It’s that kind of night, she says. I thought you could use something, she says.

“Do you need company?” she asks.

The smile he cracks is wan but trying. “Are you really volunteering?”

After all these years, she’s still not very fond of him. She would never let any harm come to him, of course, as he would never let any harm come to her. But loving each other in the ferocious way in which every Black Eagle loves another is quite a long distance from liking one another, or Dorothea thinking he’s a stunning conversationalist.

“Yes,” she says, the set of her shoulders as stubborn as ever. “Or I can send someone over.”

“I’m all right, really.” But he takes the bottle of wine she holds out all the same. “You will be with Caspar, you and Linhardt? I think -- he will taking this more to heart than I am.”

_And it is not_, he does not add, _that I have not taken it to heart. _He has no desire to distress her.

“Yeah. We’ve got him. He’s...he did it so that Lin wouldn’t have to. They’re both in a bit of a state.”

“Ah. Are you all right?”

She shrugs. “Somebody’s got to be, so here I am.”

If he asks her if she wants a hug, she will deny it. So he merely opens an arm to her, there in his doorway, and wraps it snugly around her when she slumps into his shoulder and buries her face in his coat. For a handful of minutes she allows herself to breathe and he allows himself to feel useful at something other than throwing people off their saddles to be trampled by panicking horses.

Then she pulls back, and neither of them comments on it.

“Be well,” he says. “All of you.”

“Don’t drink that whole thing by yourself.” 

He doesn’t. He shuts the door gently behind her, pours himself an overfull glass, and doesn’t feel any better when he reaches the bottom of it. He feels overheated, mostly, and a bit ill. He shrugs out of his coat and braids his damp hair back from his face; neither helps. He stands, willing his feet to be steady, and corks the treacherous bottle of wine. It is, after all, a solution better come to with company. Sans companions, he will remain sans wine.

He wonders how Edelgard fares. He hates to think she’s made of sterner stuff than he is. He hates to think that she isn’t. Whose duty is it to feel a bit queasy after a rough battle and a glass of wine? Likely no one’s. He has to pull himself together. Fresh air, he decides, will do him wonders, which is how he ends up wandering Garreg Mach. The monastery, if it even qualifies as such any longer, is hushed, as if holding a collective breath after the events of the day.

Every stretch of lawn is occupied by some other wandering resident, and, though there is more than enough room for all, Ferdinand finds himself ardently unwilling to talk, particularly to near-strangers. His search for solitude spirals him right into the library; it’s even stuffier than his rooms, but he cannot bring himself to walk back now, peace undiscovered. Besides, with Linhardt holed up elsewhere, the odds of running into anyone have been severely curtailed.

Ferdinand sits at one of the tables and pretends at good posture for a moment before slumping forward to pillow his head on his folded arms. The library curls around him with its ancient weight. There were thousands here before him and there will be thousands after, each ignorant to the troubles of the other. A comforting thought, in its way. Edelgard will change history. Ferdinand will change it with her, walking always at her right hand, but no one need ever know he sat here tonight, tipsy and melancholy.

“What are you doing here?”

Except that he forgot about the library’s other resident. Ferdinand pushes himself upright in his chair and tries to pretend he isn’t staring Hubert down in his shirtsleeves, hair straggling out of its braid. Hubert, of course, has neither stitch nor strand out of place. The room twists at an odd angle before righting itself. Ferdinand is reminded why he waters down his wine at dinner.

“Contemplating,” he manages, and at least his voice is steady. He has not had so much, after all. “This is a place of quiet, is it not?”

“Largely because you are not in it. I see you still have not mastered your inside voice.”

Ferdinand grimaces. He hadn’t thought he was being loud, and it’s not as if Hubert has lowered his voice, either. 

“I was not speaking until you spoke to me.”

“Fair enough.”

Then Hubert does the most awful, astonishing thing: he takes the chair across from Ferdinand and sits there, arms crossed over his chest, just. Staring. Trying to commit Ferdinand’s dishevelment to memory, perhaps, for later amusements or ammunition. Ferdinand bears it as long as he’s able, which he thinks is a good deal longer than could reasonably be expected of anyone.

“If you would like to make a comment —”

“You did well today.”

Ferdinand sputters to an undignified halt, his hands clenching tight around one another. “Pardon me?”

“When it became clear we were fighting old...schoolmates, I assumed that sentimentality would make you hesitate.”

A complicated accusation, given the battlefield. Ferdinand could easily take offense.

On the other hand. “Did you not think that of everyone except yourself?”

Hubert shrugs one shoulder. “More or less. And it nearly cost us our hold on the center of the bridge, with Linhardt’s whole routine. But you did your duty.”

“I did. I would never do anything less for Her Majesty.” 

It’s the one thing they can agree on in life, Edelgard the sun around which they both orbit. Ferdinand likes to think he’s more aware of, more honest about that profound gravity. 

“And yet you look perturbed.”

Ferdinand can’t help but laugh; it echoes dully around the bookshelves. “Yes, Hubert. My duty is sometimes perturbing. We were not all born on a moonless midnight with ice in our veins.”

“I have faith that you can overcome your terrible handicaps.”

It takes Ferdinand a startled moment to realize Hubert is joking. He smothers his next laugh in a balled fist, feeling as though he has crossed some awful line by finding Hubert funny. Surely such madness is reserved for the darkest of spirits.

“Thank you for that faith, I know yours is a dear commodity.” Ferdinand stands and pushes his chair in, careful not to scrape it against the floor. “And thank you for coming over to check on me.”

Hubert frowns. “Hardly.”

Ferdinand decides it is worth letting him have the last word, just this once. He is tired, and tomorrow there are yet more duties.

* * *

It is duty that takes him away from the monastery, chasing down insurrectionists in Empire territory. Unhappy work, but necessary, and he recognizes not a single face. When duty brings him — home, yes, the monastery is home now — brings him home again, he is tired and more bedraggled than one glass of wine and a rough night could ever hope to accomplish. It is good that Manuela accompanied his troops, or he would have lost an arm to that axe wound. 

He did lose another good, loyal horse.

What he wants very much is to take a long bath, get his arm out of this damnable sling once and for all, and sleep for as much of twelve hours as he’s allowed. What he does not want is to approach the ruined cathedral, seeking Edelgard to make his report, and be greeted by the sound of furiously raised voices.

Ferdinand does not dictate the universe. This much is obvious. One of the voices is Hubert, and that is Dorothea in response, he is sure of it. He slips through the crack in the great doors and yes, there they are. The common folk and soldiers have cleared out, clever as they are, and it’s only those two shouting and Linhardt, not shouting, poised between them like a deer betwixt wolves.

“I have done more to keep the miserable lot of you alive than anyone ought,” says the presumed deer, calmly, levelly, his fists flexing as if to clench.

Ferdinand reevaluates his metaphor. 

“We would not require half so much healing if you didn’t flinch away from blood like an untrained child.” Hubert does not yell, really, so much as pitch his voice louder and louder, perfectly enunciating all the while. “A dead enemy is a harmless enemy. If Caspar had lost his head, you truly would have had something to dither and faint about.”

“Don’t you _dare_ — ” Dorothea begins, and she is going to slap him. Ferdinand can see it clear as day.

Ferdinand does shout. He is particularly good at shouting, when the occasion calls for it. “Soldiers! Stand down!”

Dorothea and Linhardt both turn to face him, and even Hubert’s eyes flick toward him. None of them relax, but neither do they call a thunder spell down upon him, each other, or the already struggling pillars.

“Welcome home,” says Linhardt, as calm and cold as still water. “You’re just in time for Hubert’s constructive criticism.”

“Something I often appreciate, despite his unique turns of phrase.” Ferdinand comes close enough to see the face Dorothea is making at him. “But I think perhaps this is a strategy discussion for a less public venue?”

“I prefer to be in public when Hubie’s in this sort of mood,” says Dorothea.

Ferdinand has learned plenty about his classmates, now fellow officers, in the last five years. He now knows when Dorothea is being purposefully hurtful, particularly because she is rarely hurtful on accident. What he does not know, and may never, is whether any of her barbs ever land on Hubert.

At least Hubert’s quieter when he says, “If I haven’t had you discreetly taken care of by now, I am unlikely to. Unless you keep heaping reasons upon me.”

“Hubert,” Ferdinand tries, though he does not rightly expect it to get him anywhere. “I am exhausted, and furthermore, I am ill equipped to break up a fight between mages. I will speak to Linhardt. Later.”

Linhardt pouts. Ferdinand should have pulled him aside earlier, yes, but it is like negotiating with a brick wall, and the brick wall thinks you’re an idiot.

“Please,” Ferdinand concludes, because he has learned a thing or two about common manners.

“Fine,” says Hubert. “I wash my hands of it. Linhardt, I look forward to your funeral. It is sure to be a remarkable one.”

Linhardt’s reply is an astonishingly rude gesture and an exit that doesn’t even do Hubert the dignity of being brisk. Dorothea stares them down.

“Hubie.”

“I am henceforth considering him your responsibility.”

The very roll of her eyes is operatic. “Find a better way to say you’re worried about people, will you?”

She takes herself off after Linhardt. Perhaps if she gets through to him, Ferdinand won’t be forced to. And if wishes were fishes, they’d walk on the sea and have no concerns about supply lines.

“And just what have _you_ done to yourself?”

Ferdinand realizes too late they have left him the only target for Hubert’s ire. “Nothing Manuela did not put back together quite easily.”

Actually, she swore quite a lot. Ferdinand decides Hubert doesn’t need to know that bit.

“So you’re doing laps to test the integrity of her work?”

Ferdinand shrugs, regrets shrugging, and tries to turn the gesture into something else before Hubert can catch on.

“I must make my report, whatever my arm thinks of the matter.”

Hubert’s aggravated sigh could raise waves to sink ships. “Come then, you will make your report to me. Somewhere you’re less likely to keel over.”

Ferdinand says nothing as he faces the climb to the war room. There is nothing wrong with his legs. Healing magic is a magnificent boon, but without the adrenaline rush of battle it always makes him feel as if he’s being drawn and quartered by the smallest degrees. His shoulder aches and aches. He will not complain.

At some point, Hubert’s hand comes to rest on his good shoulder, propelling him forward and keeping him from tipping backward down the stairs. It steers him into a chair, and for one confused moment he is both here and the library, two identical Huberts staring him down with two expressions of — what? Some concerning manner of deep contemplation.

Ferdinand tries to sit in a way that does not jar his shoulder and closes his eyes, just for a moment, to organize his thoughts.

He wakes with a jolt, fumbling for the sword that is no longer at his belt. The staff member — one of Hubert’s, he thinks — who set the tray down in front of him backs away smoothly with their empty hands displayed. The tea smells like one of the infirmary’s medicinal blends, and there’s a hand pie no doubt scrounged from last night’s dinner. 

Hubert is seated across from him, ink uncapped and pen scratching away. He glances up, then dismisses the staff member with a clipped nod. 

“Eat first,” he says, as Ferdinand gathers his dignity around himself. “Then report.”


	2. And Family, Also

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for all of the great kudos and kind comments! I'm glad we're all having fun in this ridiculous ship.
> 
> Chapter warnings: the violence gets a little gnarlier in the final scene

Ferdinand would not call himself a dutiful son, but he does his best. He writes a letter at least once a month. He reads the replies, writes another. He forces out handfuls of dull paragraphs about the weather and its various effects on riding, about the history selection in the library, about his clumsy attempts to learn the language of Brigid. If he trusted his father, he might write of battles, or tactics, or grief. He does not trust his father.

He does not trust his father enough even to pen silly anecdotes about his friends. To say the former duke is displeased with house arrest would be an understatement; Ferdinand knows he seeks a way back into politics and power. Even a carefully redacted report of arguments or canoodling might be traced back to specifics, then waved in the face of this or that minister. Then again, if his father tried to cook up some scandalous blackmail about Caspar, Count Bergliez might well just punch him.

Once or twice, Ferdinand is sorely tempted. But no. It is not his pot to stir. He spends another five sentences on the intricacies of present-perfect conjugations before folding the parchment into neat thirds. 

He doesn’t bother with a seal on letter or envelope. Hubert’s staff reads every piece of mail that goes into or out of Garreg Mach, and Ferdinand doesn’t want them wasting time covering their tracks. And what other use is there for the Aegir seal now? 

Someday -- 

But not today.

They keep it in a top drawer somewhere, he thinks. 

Hubert’s staff have commandeered the rooms that once belonged to Jeritza and other now-absent staff. On one hand, they’re conveniently located. On the other, more sinister hand, it gives them access to the network of secret passages that honeycomb the monastery. As no assailants have tumbled out from behind his bookshelves, Ferdinand has resolved not to worry about it.

When Ferdinand drops off the letter, he includes a packet of the drop candies that are rarer and rarer in the market. Hubert often accuses him of bribery, but hasn’t yet threatened to remove any fingernails for the offense. The staff work too hard, that’s all. Even if they weren’t being driven by Hubert’s unyielding work ethic, they’re all cut from the same cloth. A little indulgent sweetness might avert some spontaneous assassinations, if nothing else.

“Afternoon, General,” says the young man at the desk by the door - Bertram, Ferdinand thinks. “How’s the new horse working out?”

“Very well, though I cannot shake the feeling that someone is pulling a prank on me.”

Hubert, of course, rides a black horse into battle. Anything less would be an affront to his peculiar dignity. Whoever took charge of replacing Ferdinand’s mount -- a lovely, steel-tempered dapple-gray -- found him a mare so pure white he was at first alarmed, thinking they’d hauled in a pegasus. A joke with some effort behind it, certainly, and a baffling one at that.

“No one would ever,” swears Bertram, smiling wide with one of the candies trapped between his teeth. “Lord Vestra would have us flayed alive for such levity.”

“You are all mad as two cats in a sack,” says Ferdinand, not unfondly. “No rush on the letter.”

“I’ll save it for when I need a nap. Stay safe.”

“We always try.”

* * *

It is cowardly, no doubt, that Ferdinand first tries to go to Caspar about Linhardt. He is immediately and unequivocally shot down. Caspar, as it turns out, has no interest in ‘being turned into the suggestion box for The Linhardt Problem.’

“Is that perhaps a shade harsh?” Ferdinand asks.

It is probably both cowardly and hideously rude to cut off Caspar’s exit from the dining hall, walking backwards at a clip that is going to pitch him down a flight of stairs if he’s not mindful. 

Caspar spreads his hands in open-palmed exasperation. “I just can’t go around setting precedent, or everybody he’s rude to will catch wind. And he’s rude to  _ a lot _ of people.”

“Do you not wish to help him improve?” Ferdinand presses, because if he just reaches the light at the end of this tunnel, he can call it delegation.

Finally, Caspar stops trying to walk away. He stands, one hand on his hip and the other ruffling through his hair. Ferdinand gets his hopes up. 

“Eh. I’m but a mortal man, right? And I like him just the way he is, most of the time. Look, what if everybody came to you every time Hubert threatened to kick their puppies?”

“He does not kick dogs. And he is not my --” Ferdinand taps his thumb against his chin and searches for the correct word, realizing too late that he does not know the width and breadth of Caspar and Linhardt’s relationship. “Best friend. We are...co-workers.”

“Are you kidding me?” Caspar’s bewilderment doesn’t seem affected.

“No?”

“ _ Seriously _ ?”

“If anyone is his best friend, it is Edelgard.” And that seems a hollow appellation for their relationship. 

“You can have more than one best friend! What are we, five?”

“And besides,” says Ferdinand, with what he imagines is great finality, “Hubert does not like me very much.”

“You know, it’s not very often I get the chance to call somebody dumb. So. Thanks. Dumbass.”

“Language, Caspar.” 

“If you’re not used to me saying ‘ass’ by now, I don’t know what to tell you about the rest of my vocabulary. Look.” Caspar claps a hand on Ferdinand’s shoulder as if he’s giving a rousing pep talk. “Hubert likes you plenty, I promise. And I trust you to sort this shit out with Lin. Me bossing him around would just make it weird, you know?”

Ferdinand does not know. Not for certain, anyroad, so he gathers his courage and his manners about him. In the early morning mist, the byways of the monastery are nearly deserted. It’s not a terrible place to ask a personal question, surely.

“You are well within your rights to tell me if I am prying, but are you and Linhardt…” Ferdinand thinks of his vocabulary as extensive. It has no right to fail him like this at such a delicate time. ‘Involved’? Surely if he says ‘lovers’ and is incorrect, that is a faux pas for the ages.

Caspar’s smile tightens around the corners. “Now there’s a pregnant pause.”

“My apologies.” Ferdinand shakes his head. “My thoughts were caught on something of no consequence. Linhardt is dear to you, is all I meant to ask about.”

If not a perfect reassurance, it’s enough to loosen Caspar’s posture and expression. “He is, so go help him not get his ass kicked up and down the continent by the church  _ or _ Hubert, okay?”

A sweeter sentiment Ferdinand could not imagine. It bolsters his resolve enough for him to seek out Linhardt directly. Rather, he makes the spirited attempt for two hours, stops to actually eat the breakfast his conversation with Caspar diverted him from, and then is finally able to corner him in his room.

“What?” Linhardt demands from his desk chair, eyes darting to the exit.

“You need to clean this place,” says Ferdinand, feeling rather matronly overall. “Also, we are getting you a horse. If you insist on getting near to trouble, I insist that you are able to get out of it.”

He looks at the dappled sunlight coming in through the windows and attempts to recall a sonnet through the worst of Linhardt’s ferocious complaining.

* * *

When they march for Derdriu, Linhardt is in a saddle. However, he has not stopped being snippy about it; Ferdinand is relieved to be riding with his own soldiers. They tease him a bit about the horse, though he is still not certain what the joke is, and give him a dozen suggestions for names.

Because it is a beautiful day, decked out in clear sunlight, and because they are off to slay more and more familiar faces, Ferdinand eggs them on by stringing their shouted proposals into ever-more ridiculous titles. 

“Lady Snowdrop Miracle Stalks-by-Day von Aegir the Tenth,” he muses.

“Named for her great-grandmother!”

“The last of her line!”

“The last duke!”

And the titters and shouts and elbows all slow to a stop, jittering to a halt in the bright afternoon as all faces turn to Lieutenant Breyer with her hands twisted in her reins. Every child in the Empire, Ferdinand thinks, knows the silence of a joke drawn too far into the light. She waits, as he once waited, for the axe to drop.

He cannot say it does not twist in his gut. He cannot say it is the lieutenant’s fault.

“Sorry, General,” she says, her voice very small.

Ferdinand leans forward and pats his lovely new horse. “No, that sounds right. The Last Duke it is.”

The battalion exhales as one. 

“Well, with that settled,” says Captain Hamisch, then launches into one of their famously convoluted tales. It will inevitably end in a pun, and someone will attempt to elbow them off their horse. 

Ferdinand leads his horse -- is Last or Duke a more ridiculous thing to call a horse, he wonders -- to a scouting position in the lead, though the road is well scouted and Petra’s force rides just ahead. The illusion of space is a terribly important thing. Anger is difficult to scrub from the soul, though he’s told his own is hard to come by. 

He will win this argument with Edelgard, or he will not.

He will be duke in truth, or he will not.

It is of no consequence in this moment, and it is only a horse. And a curse, perhaps, laid on the poor thing’s shoulders rather than his own.  _ There,  _ he decides.  _ That it is. It is only that she suffers this indignity in my stead. _

Around the officer’s fire that night, Edelgard sits Imperial in her riding habit, picking at a somewhat abused pastry from the monastery kitchens.

“Did you really name your horse that?” she asks.

“Lieutenant Breyer really named my horse that. What was I to do, call for her head?”

“You could have,” says Hubert, in his way of declaring inappropriate things like they’re a fun afternoon diversion.

“You would not have, either,” Ferdinand says, knowing that he is snappish, sulky still. 

“I might have, depending on how she said it to you.”

Dorothea swoops in to save him from having to respond to  _ that. _ “Anyway, I feel bad for the horse. She’s so beautiful, I don’t know where they dug her up. And sorry, Ferdie, but you don’t have the best track record with horses lately.”

“She looks like a kind of spirit,” says Petra. “The horses which are only having to do with...young people.”

“A unicorn?” Ferdinand frowns. “Is that the joke?”

Byleth has been sitting quietly all evening, cross legged next to Edelgard. They have a cup of soup resting on one knee, but if they’ve eaten any of it, Ferdinand hasn’t seen. Even before their transformation, their gaze was disconcerting. Now, Ferdinand can’t help but squirm a little under the vibrant, implacable stare.

“They’re not giving your virtue that much thought. The joke is just you and Hubert.” Their voice is perfectly bland as they continue: “Contrast is funny.”

“Well, I don’t blame them. I try not to think about Ferdie’s virtue either.”

“...Ferdinand is very virtuous.” Petra has that frustrated wrinkle between her eyes that means she knows she doesn’t know something.

Dorothea snorts. “Oh, probably.”

Ferdinand feels his face going hot. It will spread to his ears and down his neck, a redhead’s curse. “When would I have found the time to be otherwise? And with whom, for that matter?”

This is a dangerous game of chicken to play with Dorothea, but it has been a longer march than he anticipated. He is as tired and cranky as a toddler, though he thinks the toddler’s personal space might be given more respect. Dorothea leans over Petra to grin up at him, and trying to escape from her just crowds him into Hubert’s side. She’s going to get him stabbed.

“Oh, come on. What about when we were students? Not even a little acting out? Not even a bit sweet on someone?”

“I thought you did not think about it.”

“That was before you got me all curious.”

“Oh!” Petra exclaims. “You are talking about  _ fucking _ , I understand.”

Ferdinand blurts out the first horrid thing that comes to mind, desperate to derail the conversation: “I had a crush on Claude, actually, so nothing ever came of it.”

He can feel Hubert’s spasm of shock. Edelgard looks downright offended. Byleth just keeps on staring, placid and unsurprised. 

“Ferdie!” Dorothea curls a hand over her grin. “You never  _ said. _ ”

“Well, it is no longer relevant, obviously. But you asked about our student days, and I gave you my answer, so now we can drop the subject.”

“Why  _ Claude _ ?” Hubert demands.

Ferdinand shifts away from Hubert as much as he can, raising his hands in useless defense. “I do not know! He was new, and quite handsome, and very safe.”

“Safe?” Edelgard echoes.

“If I pursued any young lady from our own house, my father would have pounced on marriage negotiations immediately. But someone from the Alliance, of dubious origins, and a young man? My father would have had kittens of three colors, so I was excused from any action. It was nice to think on, that was all.”

“That’s...a little more meticulous than I expected of you,” says Dorothea.

Ferdinand shrugs a shoulder. “And he liked history. But now we ride to war with him, and it is of no consequence.”

“Try not to be the one that kills him,” Edelgard says, all thoughtful. “I worry about giving you some sort of complex.”

“It was five years ago! It would not give me a  _ complex. _ ”

“I think you already have one,” says Byleth.

Hubert stands abruptly, leaving Ferdinand’s side suddenly cold. “This is an asinine conversation. You should all rest, or we will all die tomorrow.”

“Hubert definitely has a complex,” says Byleth, watching him stalk off towards their tents.

* * *

Caspar sidles up to Ferdinand the next morning. Ferdinand is rewrapping the grip on one of his lances, and so feels justified in ignoring him. Given that gossip is one of the only entertainments left to them, particularly those of their company that do not take to books, Ferdinand is certain he is well in for it. Any hope that the dour cloud of the gossip’s other subject will smother the glee of discovery is snuffed out by Caspar’s wide grin.

Caspar lounges against a young tree, likely to snap the poor thing if he’s not careful. “And here I was worried.”

“Did you really think me that old fashioned?”

“Well, I’ve met your dad. And he’s not  _ kingdom _ bad, but I’d go ahead and call him old fashioned, yeah.”

Ferdinand abandons his task, unwilling to sacrifice quality work to his own ire. “I am not my father, Caspar.”

“And I know that, for most things. But it’s not like you put up an announcement of New Von Aegir Opinions, and you don’t...well, you don’t talk about him much, so it’s hard to gauge.” 

It is not that Ferdinand never has an unkind thought. It is only that he tries to keep them behind his teeth. He prefers to be constructive, if he must correct. So he does not say anything for a long moment, cycling through recriminations of Count Bergliez until they peter out and leave space in his mouth for gentler things.

“There is little about my father worth discussing.” Gentler by comparison, at least.

His father is a treacherous rat, but was disinclined to take that out on his once-heir. Ferdinand knows, with heavy certainty, that his childhood could have been much worse.

“Do you ever want to, though? Like it might be, I don’t know, therapeutic or something?”

At that, Ferdinand laughs a little. “I am fine, Caspar, really. Thank you. And know that I wish you and Linhardt all the best.”

“Well, like I said, complicated, so -- Hubert is stalking towards us, so I’m leaving, bye!”

He waves goodbye at Ferdinand over his shoulder as he books it back towards his soldiers. Ferdinand takes a moment to be glad of his fastidious weapons maintenance; he will not fail for want of this one lance. He waits until he can feel Hubert looming.

“If you are here to scold me for my adolescent passions, I promise it will not be of any use.”

“I am here to apologize for the horse.”

That startles Ferdinand into turning, though he’d half-resolved to not give Hubert the satisfaction. Hubert is already buckled into his armor and may well have been since dawn. He always cuts the most striking figure just before battle, decked out in so much polished black that he seems to absorb the light to keep it as his own. 

Ferdinand’s fingers itch to push Hubert’s hair out of his face. He does not, since he is attached to his hands and would like to stay that way.

“What have you done to Last that needs apologizing for?” he asks instead.

“I am apologizing for the horse altogether. My staff was responsible. They have -- ” He makes an irritated gesture. “A joke.”

“Please tell me it’s not about my virtue.”

Hubert’s expression is not encouraging. “Not entirely.”

Ferdinand decides he does not wish to know. “This is because you work them too hard, you know.”

“The horse will be replaced and my staff reprimanded.”

Ferdinand waves him off. “Nevermind it. She is a marvel of a horse, and I can take a little teasing. Wipe that dubious look off your face, please and thank you.”

Hubert does not. Indeed, he only looks yet more dubious. “Whatever our quarrels, I have allowed them to be disrespectful.”

“And now you will have them flogged? Hubert, my friend, put it out of your mind. But thank you for your kindness, all the same.”

“Very well,” says Hubert at length. “Come, we must make Lady Edelgard ready for battle.”

And he has a sunburn coming on rather quickly, so Ferdinand is happy to get him under cover.

* * *

Ferdinand does not mean to be separated from Edelgard and Hubert. In the chaos sparked by Almyran reinforcements, the battlefield is cleaved in twain. Ferdinand is not even on beautiful Last; he has surrendered her to Bernadetta, who stands in the stirrups and uses the vantage point to pepper wyverns with arrows. The ship creaks and rolls underfoot, testing his balance. Blood and wyvern ichor cover every inch of him; something got in his mouth. He will not think on it.

A rider swoops low to take a swing. Ferdinand ducks the axe and sinks his own deep into the wyvern’s neck -- poor creature -- as he grabs the saddle and hauls himself up, dragging blade through flesh as he climbs. The rider gets a boot against his chest but can’t find purchase or leverage enough. Ferdinand’s axe comes free and in one awful sweep he has the man’s neck. 

Dead mount and dead rider slam to the deck. Ferdinand rolls with the impact, but it jars up his previously wounded shoulder with terrible clarity. He loses his grip on his axe and watches it clatter across the deck. He picks up his fallen foe’s weapon instead, and it with a clumsy hold on an Almyran weapon that he stands to face Nader. The general has a wide, welcoming grin. Ferdinand cannot feel his fingers. 

He is glad Bernadetta has his horse.

Nader’s wyvern comes to rest on the deck, its claws digging gouges in the wood as it circles Ferdinand. He keeps his eyes forward; he has a better chance of dodging if he is not spinning about like a child singing nursery rhymes. 

“You lot fight like demons, I’ll give your emperor that much.”

Hot breath blossoms over Ferdinand. He ducks down and to the side, narrowly avoiding the snapping jaws of the great beast. The flat edge of his stolen axe smacks its jaw aside; it tosses its head, displeased and hopefully disoriented. 

He wants to say something biting, something dramatic and resonant, but his shoulder and chest burn with the effort of swinging the axe to parry Nader’s. The man’s blade is turned aside, but just barely. Ferdinand stumbles back a step, teeth bared.

An arrow blossoms from Nader’s chest, stuck fast in his armor. Another whistles by his face, tearing a gash a mere whisper from his eye. And then sweet Bernadetta strikes true, catching the gap in his armor between leather breastplate and pauldron. Nader gasps and heaves, and the exhale comes out badly wrong. Now even less capable of comment than Ferdinand, he gathers up his reins, turns his beast, and retreats.

Ferdinand has the will to give chase, but none of several necessary capacities.

Besides, the battle is not yet done. Crossing the Almyran ships has brought him close to to Claude’s position, and as he stumbles to the rail -- yes, there. Edelgard swings herself up into Hubert’s saddle, taking the reins from him as he sends a boiling line of black magic out against the soldiers harrying them. Petra and Caspar fall upon the faltering men like wolves and Edelgard sets her sights on Claude. 

“Bernadetta!” Ferdinand tries to shout, but he fears his voice comes out little more than a creak. “My horse!”

He must get to them. Hooves clatter on the deck behind him, an unhappy horse guided by an unfamiliar rider. He should not have given her his horse. He might be dead if he had not.

He  _ must _ get to them. Bernadetta will not make it to him in time. He gathers himself and runs headlong down the last gangplank. He cannot hear what Edelgard and Claude are saying to one another. 

Edelgard strikes true. Claude fumbles, drops his bow. But the fight has brought them too close over the backs of horse and wyvern, and when he pulls another arrow out of his quiver she is close enough that he can hold it by the shaft and --

Hubert twists them both in the saddle, arching himself over Edelgard. The arrow sinks deep into his back. Edelgard howls a curse at one or both of them. Ferdinand’s useless fingers drop his axe. Claude pulls back to draw another arrow, but Hubert rears up and grabs his wrist.

Magic surges up Claude’s arm, meeting Edelgard’s axe in his chest.


	3. Shifting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi Hubert!
> 
> Disclaimer: I swear Byleth was extremely nice to Bernie. 
> 
> Actual Meaningful Disclaimer: We are 1.5 runs into this game and it is astonishing how much we might not know. If I've dropped some non-canon in here, just take it as AU and run with it.

**Pegasus Moon**

A sleeping man ought to dream. A sleeping man ought not to think such things with such clarity and yet still struggle to grasp the waking world. Hubert fumes in the frustrating in-between, snapping after voices, lights, sensations like a fish seeking the line. When he manages noise, it is shushed; when he forces movement, it is smothered. 

As soon as the world resolves itself, he is going to murder someone. He is set on it.

He first wakes in the middle of the night to find his father at the end of his unfamiliar bed, looming as an adult does over a child. Hubert doesn’t shout or startle, but his grasp on the roiling pulse of his magic is haphazard. Across the room, a glass pitcher shatters and sends water cascading down a stranger’s sideboard. The figure of his father twists into a towering, misshapen shadow, some crest beast yet undiscovered.

The door slams open. Hubert is dragged back down into horrible semi-consciousness.

The next waking comes without the hallucinations but with a body full of recriminations for its ill use. The muscles of his back burn, as if -- exactly as if -- some reprobate on the back of a wyvern drove an arrow deep into a gap of his armor, come loose in the melee. His extremities tingle unpleasantly. His head throbs an unhappy staccato, pain bouncing from temple to temple.

He still does not know the room. It is lavish and well appointed, with only a door and one set of windows for exit. The curtains have been drawn, allowing just enough sunlight through to illuminate a chessboard, its combatants, and their spare audience. Edelgard plays white, Ferdinand black. Some infernal soul has braided their hair to match one another, and in pale house-clothes they look like the sun and moon flanking a terrible deity. 

Byleth notices him first, of course. “Fun fact - Claude poisons his arrows.”

“Hilarious,” Hubert croaks. 

He suspected as much, of course. Better he bear the brunt of it than Edelgard, though he cannot say the last time any toxin laid him out in bed for an interminable length of time. He hauls himself upright, determined not to lounge there in a sleeping shirt. Edelgard abandons the chess table with undue haste to grab one of his biceps and steady him.

Ferdinand heads to the sideboard and its new water pitcher. Byleth continues staring at Hubert, though they also take advantage of the players’ distraction to swap two pieces in Edelgard’s favor.

Hubert glowers at them; Edelgard is more than skilled enough to win without cheating. Byleth gives the smallest hint of a shrug, the impression of a smirk. 

“Thankfully, Linhardt got to you in time,” says Edelgard, arranging the pillows and gentling him back against them as if she’s his nursemaid rather than his emperor. Hubert attempts to rally himself in protest, but accomplishes little more than sweat.

“And yet he is still punishing me for the horse,” says Ferdinand. 

The pewter cup he presses into Hubert’s hand is chill to the touch and full of sweet, clear water. It’s a frivolous waste of magic on someone’s part. Hubert’s attempt to sip with dignity is overwhelmed by his baser instincts; he downs it in one long swallow. Ferdinand retrieves and refills it.

“Am I to be doted on by all ranking members of army and government in succession, or are you two enjoying yourselves too much?”

“You nearly died,” says Ferdinand, giving him a plaintive look.

Hubert scoffs. “I did not.”

“You did.” Edelgard is as brisk and forthright as always, but she sits perched on the edge of his mattress and her hand has not left his arm. “If Linhardt had not also gotten to _ Claude _ in time, we’d have lost you.”

Of all the idiot things that useless bleeding heart has ever done.

“Have I been compelled to wellness to see him hanged for treason?”

Edelgard glares down her nose at him. “Claude instructed us on the creation of an antidote, sorely needed.”

“The poison was manufactured to resist magical breakdown,” Byleth adds. “Based on the toxin of some Almyran frog with arcane protections.”

Hubert blinks at them. They blink back.

“Fascinating,” he says. 

“Yes.”

Can one import frogs over borders?

“And if anyone is seeing Linhardt hanged, it is me.” The petulance in Ferdinand’s voice is belied by his shrewd gaze on the chess board. He returns the two rearranged pieces to their prior posts. “He only has the energy to gossip when he is feeling malicious, and now for three days straight Claude has been haranguing me with increasingly farcical marriage proposals.”

Edelgard folds a hand over her mouth and fails to hide her grin. “Some of the bride prices have been admittedly tempting, speaking as the one who would collect them.”

There it is again, that unpleasant swoop in Hubert’s chest, as if he has missed a step at the bottom of a staircase. Jealousy does not become him. In fact, he was very pleased with himself when Edelgard’s obvious fascination with Byleth returned elicited nothing more serious than irritated concern. He failed to factor in other variables, such as Ferdinand tucking a stray curl behind his ear as he examines the chessboard for other sinister machinations

“Fifteen boats.” Byleth makes eye contact with Hubert as they recite: “Five hundred horses. Twenty thousand gold a year for the rest of their long and happy life together.”

Ferdinand collapses back into his chair and flings his arms heavenward in dramatic supplication to a cold and merciless goddess. “All right, that is more than enough!”

“They’re going to adopt,” says Edelgard airily. “Claude has already named their children.”

“Heaven help me, I am going to riot.”

“By yourself?” Byleth asks.

“I am determined_._”

“I thought you could take a little teasing,” says Hubert, with much more bitterness than warranted. 

“From _ you _, Hubert. ...And your staff, I suppose, by extension. Certainly not from some cocky lordling who nearly murdered you, for goodness sake.”

Hubert tries to smother his smirk, as Edelgard is already giving him a significant amount of side-eye. 

“Well,” she declares, standing and shaking out her skirts. “It is obvious that Claude is growing bored with our company, and we have no further need of him, so I’d best threaten him roundly over dinner before packing him back off to Almyra. Do I undo all Petra’s hard work, or show up looking like a Brigid berserker?”

“Berserker,” says Byleth, standing to offer Edelgard their arm.

“So I thought.” Edelgard threads her arm through Byleth’s elbow and nods to Ferdinand. “I’ll have trays sent up. See that Hubert eats what they give him.”

“Hubert will see that Hubert eats what they give him,” grumps Hubert, but she has already swept out of the room with her escort.

Ferdinand tips Edelgard’s queen over with a smug wink in Hubert’s direction. That in itself should be enough to ignite suspicion, a subtle declaration of treasonous intent. Instead, Hubert allows himself a snort of laughter and ignores the way his usually inviolate heart stutters.

“It is the only way I will ever beat her at chess,” Ferdinand confesses. “Particularly when she has Byleth on her side.”

Hubert is willing to break every moral rule on Edelgard’s behalf; he isn’t sure Byleth knows the rules were written in the first place.

Ferdinand pushes the table and chessboard closer to the bed, white on Hubert’s side, and begins resetting the pieces. 

“You can attend dinner. I’m not in need of a babysitter.” Even his headache has retreated to the dusty corners of his skull, unwilling to peek out and face his anger.

“Well,” Ferdinand drawls, and his accompanying smile is strained at the corners. “It is more that you are my babysitter, really. We are in the new house of Count Bergliez, who is entertaining a number of the nearby Alliance lords as they pledge their grateful service to our glorious Empire. Edelgard trotted me out to make them nervous, but right now they are meant to be adoring her.”

Proof that Edelgard is willing to strip a family of its title, holdings, money, and dignity: an expert use of the Aegir disgrace, and no doubt one that wears on Ferdinand’s pride. Perhaps Hubert shouldn’t be shocked Ferdinand is taking it without complaint; he knows very well the man is no longer seventeen. 

“Inform me if any of them address it with you directly. Their apprehension shouldn’t extend to openly questioning Her Majesty’s officers.”

That summons a real smile, a talent Hubert hardly knew he had. Ferdinand reaches over and, when Hubert does not flinch away or snap at him, pats his hand. A heal spell -- the only magic Ferdinand ever bothered to learn -- accompanies the gesture; weak though it is, it chases away some of the dragging weight in his limbs.

“Oh, Lorenz has already set his sights on my position, my friendships, and my magnificent horse, but I daresay Linhardt will light him on fire for fifteen other reasons before you even get the chance.”

“A shame.”

* * *

Hubert wins two chess games and loses another, eats the thin, brothy porridge sent up as his meal, and accepts another faltering heal spell before he can no longer fight sleep. He feels even more himself when he wakes to full morning light and Edelgard with her hair in correct order. They are alone, which is why she can cross the room and drop a kiss on the crown of his head.

“I know I cannot command you not to die for me,” she murmurs into his hair, which has not been washed and cannot be pleasant. “But I am very, very grateful that you’re alive. Thank you, Hubert. You are the only family I have left who is worth the breath they draw, please endeavor to take care of yourself.”

“I love you as well, Your Majesty.” The sarcastic bite cannot smother the sincerity of the sentiment. He has long since learned not to object to being considered close enough to be _ family. _ If it soothes her to think of him so, then...he cannot say it doesn’t soothe him as well.

She pats his shoulders bracingly and steps back. “Now, get up and get dressed before Ferdinand dithers himself into oblivion.”

* * *

In an unfortunate turn of events, Lorenz is tapped to be the once-Alliance’s ambassador to their new liege. To be fair, if Hubert must, this could be an honest effort to send the heir of highest standing to the negotiating table. To be doubtful, which Hubert will, Lorenz is still just an heir at the end of the day, and not one any of the Black Eagles got along with. 

Well, Ferdinand perhaps, when they were students. But that bridge has been well and truly burned, and Lorenz does little to disguise that.

When Lorenz has a variety of inevitable opinions about how the rest of them are conducting their lives, he takes it up in private. Already Linhardt has interrupted a cabinet meeting (Edelgard’s stunning cabinet of Hubert, Byleth, and Ferdinand) to lodge a complaint, pitching his voice to mockery of _ nobles conducting affairs _ and _ matters of discretion, you understand _ , rounding it off with a threat to be indiscreet on a dining hall table if Lorenz so much as raises another eyebrow at him _ or _ Caspar _ or _Dorothea, thank you goodbye. 

Aside from being a fascinating display of Linhardt with his dander up, that allows Hubert to tidy up a few of his suppositions and makes Ferdinand turn a fascinating shade of pink.

Lorenz’s inevitable opinions about Ferdinand are not kept private. They’re staring down an invasion of their stronghold by church forces; Hubert did not anticipate his largest headache being barbed comments about noble loyalty, about _ well, it seems it’s not all down to breeding, after all _, about integration of Alliance nobles to ‘replace vacated positions.’ 

Ferdinand bears it all as cheerfully as anyone could be asked to. Certainly, Hubert would have knifed Lorenz by now, were he in Ferdinand’s position. Edelgard cuts it all off when appropriate -- and indeed had to deliver a straight-faced lecture about an imposition of values on other persons’ affairs -- but news of Rhea’s forces approaching takes up the bulk of her time, and rightly. To make matters worse, Byleth grows even quieter than usual, tucking away their awful sense of humor, wandering about looking as if they have neither slept nor eaten. 

“What is he going to do?” asks Ferdinand over tea one late night-early morning, when they have fallen away from terrain maps and into gossip. “Demote me?”

“Do we have permission to conduct duels?” he asks Edelgard two days later at breakfast, an impatient twist to his usual energy, and looks genuinely disappointed when she tells him no.

He accepts a cup of coffee from Hubert that weekend, looking drawn and downright irritable. “I am allowed my pride.”

“You are,” Hubert agrees, and they return to supply inventory in case Rhea can instigate a true siege.

The war table is tense and terser than usual, and that can’t be laid entirely at Lorenz’s feet. Noone is pleased with the situation, despite the morale boost of their victory over the Alliance. Every one of them is worried about Byleth.

“Seteth and Flayn will be there,” they repeat it like a fact, like a prophecy. And though their strategic recommendations are as keen as ever, they do nothing to diffuse the anxiety of the room. “No one touch them.”

“They are in league with the beast,” Hubert points out reasonably. “And given everything we know about them, which is little enough, their very natures are suspect.”

Byleth turns their flat, iridescent gaze upon him. “If they need to die, I will kill them. If you raise arm or magic against them before I make that choice, I will rip your foul tongue out of your clever mouth.”

They haven’t threatened him like that since they were his professor in truth. How nostalgic. He tips a glance at Edelgard, raising a brow. Edelgard touches her fingertips against the back of Byleth’s hand, the barest contact muffled by two sets of gloves. Byleth sags in their chair, and Hubert is close enough to see that the uncanny brightness of their eyes is refracted and magnified by unshed tears. 

“Understood,” he says. He is not entirely without pity, and he trusts Byleth to cut them down if that’s the necessary choice. As long as the beasts do not threaten Edelgard, he can leave Byleth to their business.

“_ I _ do not understand,” says Lorenz, who could not possibly let something pass him by without his full understanding and commentary. “You’ve said a great deal about this Immaculate One being a terrible and manipulative monster. If they are her kin, why spare them?”

On the upside, it is always a treat to watch Byleth do their work.

But it’s Ferdinand who replies. He inclines his head to Lysithea and says: “We have always given quarter on the field of battle. It is the just and honorable thing to do.”

He is saying this more to Hubert than Lorenz. Hubert acknowledges this, and the point, with a short nod. There is a reason he does not often dictate the things they do in daylight; honor is lost on him.

Lorenz scoffs. “It is unbecoming to lie.”

Ferdinand’s shoulders go up. Edelgard and Byleth straighten in their chairs, all trace of prior softness wiped away. Lorenz seems to take the uncanny shift of attention as his due, the spotlight swinging at last to his soliloquy. 

“Lie?” Ferdinand asks, and he forces a facsimile of a friendly chuckle. “Not at all.”

“And to my face. I should expect no less of someone from such disreputable ilk.” Lorenz folds his hands on the table and turns to Edelgard, dismissing Ferdinand entirely. “Your Majesty, if your new world is to flourish, I encourage you to separate wheat from chaff. I daresay that from some of these insurrectionist houses of yours, you don’t even know how thin the blood has been drawn by, pardon my language, bastards.”

And that is where Ferdinand’s indefatigable temper cracks and crumbles. Hubert might like to claim some special insight into the delicate goings-on of Ferdinand’s darker emotions, but it is quite obvious in the way he pushes to his feet, chair clattering to its back on the floor, and vaults over the war table in a positively graceful display of athleticism. Edelgard stands. Hubert stands. Byleth remains seated as Ferdinand stomps the short distance across the table’s middle to Lorenz’s seat, fists both hands in Lorenz’s collar, and drags him over the tabletop to dump him on the floor in an undignified heap.

If it were a one-sided fight, if Lorenz were a shrinking violet, that might have been that. Ferdinand already looks shocked with himself, fingers flexing and eyes wide as saucers. But Lorenz is not delicate, and is back on his feet in an instant, hissing some insult Hubert cannot fully hear. 

Later, Hubert will claim he does not know who threw the first punch. It is Ferdinand. 

There is much yelping and leaping out of chairs and castigations for the two grown men engaging in fisticuffs on the floor like a pair of twelve year olds. Edelgard barks at them to stop and is furious to be ignored. Hubert crosses the tabletop himself with much less elegance than Ferdinand managed and is content to stand and watch until they wear themselves out.

Then Lorenz gains leverage, mostly against Ferdinand’s doubts on the whole affair. Ferdinand lies pinned beneath him, hands up in surrender, looking more thoroughly humiliated than Hubert has ever seen.

“I yield,” he pants. “I yield, I yield, I’m sorry --”

“You gave Leonie no chance to yield.” And there is fire in Lorenz’s hand.

Hubert yanks him off Ferdinand by the back of his much abused collar, smothering the magic with his own. He has a knife out of his sleeve and against Lorenz’s throat before either of them can draw a full breath.

“Are you quite done?” Edelgard has traveled into a terrible country beyond shouting, the sort of icy tundra no man wishes to find himself in. She is _ on _ the table, towering over them all by any means necessary. “You’re all dismissed.”

Never has an assembly been happier to leave the room and probably the building entire. 

“Wow,” says Byleth, their first glimmer of a joke all week. At least they’ve accomplished that.

“Release him, Hubert.”

Hubert does not let on one iota that he is reluctant to obey. He lowers the knife and pushes Lorenz away from him, away from Ferdinand, away from Edelgard. He extends a hand to Ferdinand, who accepts the help but drops into a bow to Edelgard as soon as he has his feet under him. Breath harsh, hair straggling around his face, he remains bent nearly at a right angle.

“Lorenz. If I dismiss you, are you going to further assault any of my generals?”

Whatever defense Lorenz wants to mount, he quickly thinks better of it. “No, Your Majesty.”

“Excellent. Ask the guard at the door to escort you to your room. I will speak with you about manners in your new empire at a later time.”

There is a moment where Hubert thinks about laughing at Lorenz’s indecision to go over the table or under it, or if to move the pieces apart would be to sacrifice more dignity than less. With Edelgard’s rapt gaze on all of them, he refrains from snickering. Lorenz eventually decides on ‘over’ like an affronted cat, and he goes. They wait to hear him speaking to the guard. They wait for two sets of footsteps to recede.

“I was not expecting trouble to come from your corner, General Aegir.” 

“My apologies, Your Majesty.”

Edelgard speaks by necessity to the top of Ferdinand’s head. Ferdinand speaks largely to the carpet. The sigh she heaves could shift mountains; when she turns to hop off the table, Byleth is already waiting to offer a courtly hand. There is no trace of melancholy left on Byleth’s features now; the smile they turn on Hubert and Ferdinand is small but very sharp.

The Black Eagles blossomed under Byleth’s tutelage. It’s possible less awful students would have found them alarming.

“Well, you’d both best get back over here, unless you’re living between the tables now.”

The process is less amusing from this side of it, but Hubert and Ferdinand make it back to the proper and orderly world without incident. Ferdinand at last raises his gaze, but if he clenches his jaw any tighter he is bound to crack a molar.

“I have no excuses.”

“Nor do I.”

The polite phrase for Ferdinand’s expression is ‘boggled.’ “Your Majesty?”

“I confess, Ferdinand, that I think of you much the same way I think of a fortress wall. One watches out for trebuchets, of course, but does not otherwise concern themselves with whether or not the wall will stay up.” Edelgard spreads her hands, palms up. “I neglected the dangers of one dedicated asshole with a pickaxe.”

Ferdinand squares his shoulders as if determined to make himself as fortress-like as possible. “That should not have been a concern. Particularly not yours. I reacted like a child.”

“You always were easily provoked,” says Hubert, and is rewarded by Ferdinand relaxing enough to give him an exasperated look. “What, did I hallucinate you ever trotting after Lady Edelgard demanding her attention for duels?”

“Dear Hubert, what would I do without your encyclopedic knowledge of my foibles?” 

And here Hubert thought his promotion to ‘my friend’ was difficult for his idiot hindbrain to fare. 

“Let Lorenz Hellman Glouscester, of all people, do you seriously bodily harm. I’m ashamed of you for that, if anything.”

“Gentlemen, if you please.”

They turn their attention back to their emperor, who is regarding Hubert with a knowing look he likes even less than every knowing look that came before it. 

“Ferdinand, you are forgiven, should you swear to me that you will never again punch an imperial guest.”

“Of course!”

“You are also hereby placed on leave for three days as punishment. I suggest you take a nap or do something otherwise relaxing.” The knowing look intensifies; Hubert hates it yet more. “I am going to take advantage of young Lord Gloucester’s terrible manners and abhorrent behavior to be shocked and appalled at the Alliance lords until they feel ashamed of their paltry concessions to the war effort.”

She really is a marvel, though.

* * *

For the first day of Ferdinand’s erstwhile punishment, Hubert is too busy to concern himself with the situation. The world still marches on; an army still marches towards Garreg Mach. Edelgard gives the war room a very serious address regarding the importance of unity to prosperity, and Lorenz has either the grace or the intelligence to look ashamed of himself. There are few here who would hold it against him, in truth; they all know the indelible mark loss leaves on the soul.

The second day, Hubert knocks on Ferdinand’s door to make sure he has not driven himself or anyone else mad with boredom. Ferdinand answers looking only slightly less ready to run right out and join the field of battle than usual. 

His eyebrows are all shock, but he sounds pleased when he says, “Hubert, come in. Has my punishment been updated to drawn and quartered, then?”

“Not if you’ve been behaving yourself.”

The door swings shut behind Hubert; he wipes away all reaction to being alone, with Ferdinand, in Ferdinand’s room. It was all much easier to keep tidy before Ferdinand confessed an attraction to men. Irresponsible of him, really. Irresponsible of him to have grown out of being a too-proud teenager operating at undesirable decibel levels and into a man worth admiring at all.

Ferdinand waves Hubert into the desk chair and perches at the edge of the bed, picking up a sheaf of papers. He’s been marking them up as he goes, if the ink stains on his hands and sheets are any indication. 

“One of Manuela’s compatriots at the opera sent along a new script for her review. Dorothea told me to take it and stop pestering them, so here I am.”

“Maudlin garbage, then?”

“Not near maudlin enough! Operas are meant to be _ passionate _. Not even Dorothea could eke an aria out of something so tepid. Such a meek and mild lead is likely to vanish into thin air without the audience taking note.”

He could go on. He will go on, if Hubert lets him. Hubert is half-tempted. There is something to be said for nudging Ferdinand in a direction, winding him up and watching him go. It’s like sitting on a covered veranda with a cup of coffee as a good-natured thunderstorm goes about its work of frightening animals and destroying trees.

But.

Byleth cornered him yesterday evening, in the unflappable, nonnegotiable way they’ve always used with him. 

(They once threatened to shove him in a sack and drown him. He can no longer remember what he did to deserve such a thing, only that it marked Byleth’s transformation into a potential ally and asset.) 

“If I wanted to herd a house of feral cats,” they said, “I would have gone with the Lions. Check on Ferdinand.”

Hubert was not the sort to waste time on blustering protestations. He merely cocked his head and asked them the obvious: why him, with all their much less busy compatriots available.

“You’ll tell him the truth.”

And fair enough.

“Ferdinand,” Hubert says, refusing to raise his voice even an inch.

To his credit, Ferdinand comes to a near-immediate halt. He even, when he catches the look on Hubert’s face, stops waving the offending opera through the air like a battle standard and abandons it on the bed. 

“This is still a sort of drawn and quartered, you understand.”

“If you’d prefer to be running around assaulting people, I’ll have you reassigned. Otherwise, you can offer me an explanation.”

“You were there when Edelgard pardoned me.”

Hubert knows his posture -- arms crossed over his chest, leaning back slightly in his borrowed chair -- is more suited to interrogations than heart-to-hearts. He has absolutely zero experience with the latter, but a least trusts himself to conduct the former without killing anyone.

“Forgiveness and understanding are two radically different concepts. I told you to come to me if Lorenz started testing you.”

Anger flits across Ferdinand’s expression, a pale shadow of his earlier outburst. “I _ did. _ When nothing was done about the matter, I assumed I was merely being...particular.”

“You did not.” Hubert could not have failed to notice. “When?”

“Several times! The latest not yet a week gone. The man drove me to coffee, Hubert. I do not know what else to tell you.”

Or perhaps he could have. “That was complaining, not a complaint.”

“I did not...” Ferdinand sighs, breaking his habitual eye contact to stare instead at the calendar over Hubert’s shoulder. “I did not wish to seem overly bothered.”

“How am I to calibrate my responses to you if you decide to up and be subtle for the first time in your life?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Cruel.” Hubert sees that he will be the one responsible for cracking open this conversation and drawing out its bloody heart. “He wouldn’t have called you a bastard if you hadn’t shown it bothered you.”

“You would have gotten along famously with my nanny. _ Just don’t react, Ferdie, and they’ll leave you be. _”

Ferdinand’s approximation of a scolding old maid is uncanny. He still refuses to meet Hubert’s eyes, shoulders drawn up, mouth twisted. Humiliated.

Even if Ferdinand had not shown up at the officer’s academy and immediately introduced himself to all and sundry as the _ legitimate _ son of the Aegir house, please and thank you, Hubert still would have dug into the matter. He has dug into the matter with every single classmate of noble lineage, enemy or ally; the information is simply too useful to pass over, and not usually well hidden.

Neither of Ferdinand’s parents was a faithful spouse. He inherited his crest from his mother. 

“You can’t stay fixated on it for the rest of your life, especially since it’s likely enough to be true.”

“Is this some sort of sadistic test you’ve devised?”

“I’m telling you this for your own good, and if I were you I would cling to the possibility. Do you want to lose all that ridiculous hair of yours?”

That startles Ferdinand into weak laughter. “Leave off my hair. It was my most prized proof of my legitimacy.”

“I suspect your mother was canny enough to stick to redheads. It’s relatively common, particularly with northerners. Remember that great mountain of a man stalking that little Lions girl?”

“Annette,” Ferdinand corrects immediately, ever compelled to mind his manners. “And Gilbert. I beg of you Hubert, stop speculating on my mother’s affairs.”

“Your mother was fair, wasn’t she? Did she ever travel to the Kingdom seeking out diplomatic ties? Think of it, you could be a Gautier.”

“I might prefer it, even addled-brained as they are.” Ferdinand scrubs a hand through the hair in question, then has to pause a moment to untangle his fingers from its snare. He neglects it so. “That was -- do not mistake me, I was angry at Lorenz. But I was furious with myself for still giving a damn. I have no inheritance! My father is despicable! I do not know why I cling to this.”

Hubert does not often wish he knew the words to comfort. “The lessons beaten into us as children are difficult to let go of.”

“Poetry. May I confess something awful?”

“Of course.”

“I wish you had killed him.”

Whatever Hubert expected, in those scant seconds between, it wasn’t that.

“Ah,” he says, as if he is a stupid man instead of a clever one.

“Awful,” Ferdinand repeats. “And cowardly. How many fathers would I consign you to kill? I am _ jealous _, Hubert, of all horrible things to be. Jealous of your clean break.”

“A tidy way to put it. I am not aggrieved, so you may put that concern to the side.”

Not that he thinks for a moment that Ferdinand will. Ferdinand feels so many things so profoundly; Hubert has no idea how the man keeps up with himself. Except, it seems, that he doesn’t. Not always.

Ferdinand sits bowed over now, elbows on his knees and his clasped hands in front of his mouth in a parody of prayer. “I write him letters as if he is not a monster.”

What does one do in the face of distress? Hubert thinks of Edelgard and Byleth, of the barest touch between gloves. He leans forward and clasps a hand around one of Ferdinand’s wrists, too familiar and too aggressive. Ferdinand startles upright, but he does not pull away.

“I’ve read your letters. They are unspeakably boring and likely count as punishment in and of themselves. Still, that man does not deserve them. Not one iota more of your attention, your care, or any further angst about your mother’s entirely explicable search for greener pastures.” Hubert forces himself to let go and move back. “We are no longer accepting mail from the disgraced Aegir estate. I will burn it myself.”

“The mail,” Ferdinand croaks, “and not the estate, I should hope.”

“We shall see.”

The look on Ferdinand’s face is something akin to wonder, some close cousin to a revelation. Hubert refuses to dwell on it.


	4. Alterations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let it be known throughout the land that Edelgard stole Seteth's prom date

Perhaps Hubert would do best to leave well enough alone. However, leaving things alone is not what’s gotten him this far in a life marked by conspiracy and murder. Walking away has never kept him or anyone else safe. And now is certainly not the time to start exploring routes of dubious value.

It is easy enough to break into Lorenz’s room. There is no place left in Garreg Mach that does not open to Hubert. Thin moonlight filters in through the windows, offering an agreeable atmosphere.

Hubert stands over Lorenz’s bed, hands clasped behind his back, and waits. Lorenz may be obnoxious, but he is a soldier still; it isn’t long before he wakes, mere seconds between recognition of a threat and his hands arcing through the motions of a spell.

“Do not,” says Hubert, voice low. “And do not shout.”

Lorenz stills. “If you want my corpse, Vestra, I am going to make you work for it.”

“What would I do with an idiot’s corpse? And sit up, you look ridiculous.”

As he sits, Lorenz clutches the sheets to his chest as if he has modesty to preserve. 

“Her Majesty doesn’t know you’re here.”

“No.”

“Is there a point to this terrorizing?” 

“I have cleared time in my schedule to relieve you of some misapprehensions.”

“You have ‘cleared time’ to insult me at --” Lorenz’s gaze darts about the room and lands on nothing to tell him how deep in the morning they are. “An absurd hour.”

“I’m a busy man. I must carefully mete out my public service projects.”

“Go on then. I suppose you’ll grind my bones to bake your bread if I ever touch another hair on the sainted Aegir head.”

True, but unnecessary to harp on about. 

“Had Ferdinand truly wanted to do you harm, you wouldn’t be alive to feel insulted. We have proof enough of that.” He ignores Lorenz’s offended hiss. “As it is late and I am tired, I am hopeful that words will be enough to disabuse you of your ridiculous notion that we are going to put up with the Alliance’s...bad habits.”

“Which are?” Lorenz asks, as if he’s ignorant to his people’s myriad sins. And perhaps he is. Not one of them seems to realize they were running their collective territory like children squabbling over cakes. 

“Lady Edelgard has no patience for your sort of backbiting. It will earn you less than nothing, certainly not a ministerial position. If you want her to decide that the Gloucester lands will make a charming nature preserve then by all means, carry on. Otherwise, you might put some effort into looking more like a dedicated public servant than a bored teenager. Am I understood?”

“You are a lunatic. But yes, you are understood.” Lorenz waves a hand as if he is in any position to dismiss anyone. “Thank you, Lord Vestra.”

His voice drips with disdain. He will never succeed if he cannot put a lid on that, which is hardly Hubert’s problem. Hubert really should let him feel like he’s had the last word, see what he dismisses and what he takes to heart. It is worth letting new allies be useful.

Hubert should under no circumstances show his own hand.

“And if you do feel like touching a hair on that ‘sainted Aegir head,’ remember that I can and will turn your rib cage into windchimes. Good night, Lord Gloucester.”

Unacceptable, but satisfying.

* * *

The inevitable draws near; the anxiety within Garreg Mach grows as oppressive and inescapable as humidity in a swamp. Hubert’s own staff, handpicked for their sangfroid, do their level best not to show it, but even their edges begin to fray. There is more snapping in the offices, more barbed comments about the things they know bother one another. Rhea needs to hurry it up.

None of them have been so foolish as to turn it on him, of course, but he prefers to break up just the one fistfight a month. 

Two swift knocks on the door, then Bertram cracks it open and pops his head in the room. “General’s here, sir.”

No sense asking which general. Hubert caps his ink and tidies away his work before following Bertram down the hall to their makeshift reception space. Ferdinand has balanced a tray on Bertram’s desk with a coffee service that none dare touch, but near half Hubert’s staff has crowded in to stare at the covered basket he has slung over one arm.

Spoiled, the lot of them. If Ferdinand ever gets it in his mind to turn his back on the empire, he could have Hubert’s spy network devastated in an instant. 

“Last of the supply runs came in,” Ferdinand is saying, “so we thought we should give everyone a bit of a treat. You would never think of it to look at him, but one of my captains is the son of pastry chefs. A marvel!”

He sets the basket down and lifts the cover to reveal some several dozen scones. Hubert stands back and watches his staff: the way they eyeball each other, assessing pecking order and willingness to misbehave. 

“My desk,” Bertram declares, cutting through the crowd, “my scones. Shoo!” 

He grabs two out of the basket, signaling a descent. Anyone who is out will have to rely on friends or favors to see one squirrelled away for them. If they have neither such thing, there’s more than baked goods to reassess about their position.

Ferdinand grabs the tray, which has its own bundle of presumably-scones tied in a cloth, and holds it up as he picks his way through the crowd through Hubert. Hubert takes it from him as soon as it’s in reach, and they retreat from the field of battle.

“You’re going to get your captain kidnapped, you understand,” Hubert says as he sets the tray down and Ferdinand pulls the door shut. 

“May he and Bertram spend many happy days together.”

It’s a relief to see a tea strainer and hot water on the tray with the coffee. The effects of stress and caffeine on Ferdinand have been well noted for future interventions. If anyone dares ask, Hubert takes tea with him to make sure he is not about to snap. There are few things in life more satisfying than a convenient excuse.

“So,” says Ferdinand, once they are settled in and no longer pretending to review border assignments, “Lorenz refuses to make eye contact with me.”

“A miracle. And to think I had given up on the goddess.”

“We are claiming divine intervention, then?”

“What is it the faithful like to go on about -- mysterious ways?”

“More mysterious than ever, of late. Thank you, Hubert.”

“I am but a vessel.”

Ferdinand cocks his head. “I am trying to imagine you in the clergy. What a confessor you would have made.”

“They send me the sinners that make the others faint.”

“Your Holiness, I have punched an obnoxious man and forced a friend upon a horse.”

Ferdinand does not say, ‘I have killed. I have cute a bloody swathe through foreign lands. I have hefted the executioner’s axe in the name of my emperor.’ It would be rude to bring it up, and none of it is likely to make Hubert the least bit lightheaded.

“Tie the obnoxious man to the horse,” he says instead. 

“Ah, there it is, the holy insight. I have misremembered the words to my favorite opera, I have --” Ferdinand exhales in a puff of nervous laughter. “Nevermind.”

Hubert takes a sip of coffee, perfectly made, and thinks about leaving it be. “Something too salacious for the confessional, General?”

He is rewarded by Ferdinand going pink from forehead to chin and scrambling to make some renewed point about bridges and rivers and national security. 

* * *

Battle feels different when it comes to their own stolen walls. It swings overhead like a vulture waiting for the delight of their corpses. The horses are nervous. The riders are nervous. Caspar has not stopped talking for the past two hours straight, a string of inconsequential babble that Hubert has well and truly tuned out. He will notice if Caspar shuts up, he supposes, because that will mean Caspar is dead.

Hubert has his own little distractions.

“Are you sure?” Petra asks Edelgard. From anyone else, it would be wheedling. “You will be matching.”

A fire has been lit in Petra. She and Dorothea spent half the morning -- after plans were solidified, breakfast was eaten, and armor was strapped on -- braiding. Hubert is thankful he cut his own hair short long ago; not even Manuela has been spared, though it suits her in a way he does not imagine he could pull off.

Edelgard chuckles, low and unworried. “Thank you, Petra, but my headpiece is my crown. We’ll have to plan adjustments another time.”

“I understand.” Petra cocks her head like a great bird about to spear something delicious. “Professor?”

Byleth snaps back to reality, suddenly seeing the sunny stone walls and Edelgard beside them. Where they wandered in their mind, Hubert cannot guess. They run a hand through the chin-length mess of their hair.

“Ten minutes,” they say.

Petra falls upon them. 

Ferdinand laughs from Hubert’s other side. He submitted quietly much earlier, ever ready to be yanked about for the whim of a friend’s happiness. Something has at last settled between him and Dorothea. Hubert can’t even think to be jealous of it. If Linhardt and Caspar are not keeping Dorothea busy, then Petra’s fervent interest in her certainly will. 

He’ll have to keep an eye on that. Linhardt’s not likely to murder anyone in a passionate rage, but he doesn’t think that’s out of Petra’s wheelhouse. Right now, though, she is content to pull Byleth’s hair back out of their eyes and twist buttercups into it. 

“Yellow roses would be better,” Petra explains as she works, “for ferocity! And unity on the field! But this is being an okay substitute.”

“I have been consigned to dandelions,” says Ferdinand in an amused undertone. “I see how it is.”

Petra barely has time to clip Byleth’s hair into place before the alarm goes up. Rhea is here.

* * *

By the time the battle turns in their favor, Ferdinand has shed most of his ferocious dandelions. His hair is matted with blood, the bulk of it his own; Linhardt’s horse is still earning its keep. Another knight breaks against him, battered beneath his axe and Last’s immaculate hooves. In violence, his usually vibrant face grim and drawn, he is a vision.

There is no one left to kill. There is only another enemy on another wyvern, this one distinctly less likely to be venomous. They’ve herded Seteth into a corner. Dutifully, they wait. Dorothea steps aside to make way for Byleth, who drags Flayn forward with an iron grip on the girl’s arm. 

A girl in truth. She has not aged a day in five years, no more than Byleth has. Flayn’s face may be streaked with tears but her eyes and her bared teeth are furious. A little beast.

“Flayn!” And a bigger one.

“Come, Seteth.” Byleth in anger is a thing to behold. “We need to talk.”

He doesn’t even make them draw their blade on Flayn; he must know better. He dismounts and throws down his axe before they even request it. Five years ago, Seteth presented such a mystery, such an obstacle, Hubert’s mirror at the Archbishop’s side. He seems smaller now, not so much older than Hubert -- though he could be infinitely older still. 

“Let her go, Byleth.”

Byleth does not. They advance, pulling Flayn along with them. Edelgard’s hands tighten around Aymr.

“Do you know what Rhea did to me, Seteth?” Byleth asks, so even, so calm.

“I have an inkling.”

“Do you have an ‘inkling’ of how many times she failed before me?”

“I do not.”

“How many would it take?”

Another step forward. Edelgard tenses; Byleth is in Seteth’s reach now. Hubert calls up a spell and holds it just on the brink of casting; from the sharp sniff of ozone in the air, Dorothea is doing the same.

“What do you mean?” Seteth is trying to keep his voice steady, trying to seem as if his hands aren’t reaching out towards Flayn, not quite daring to touch her.

“How many babes ripped from the womb, cries smothered, heartbeats stoppered, before you looked at her as monster instead of sister?”

Edelgard does not look surprised to hear any of this. If any one of them is confessor, she is; Rhea’s sins have been dragged to her feet and left twitching and half-alive. To Hubert, it explains a great deal. To the others, he cannot imagine. Ferdinand’s battle-face is cracking into distress.

“She -- ”

“She? She was lonely, she was desperate? Did she ever offer to bring you back your wife?”

With a sharp cry, Flayn twists in Byleth’s grasp. She sinks her nails into their arm, her mouth into their wrist. They do not flinch; they stare at her with dead-fish eyes until she gives it up for useless and sags again in their grasp. 

“Rhea is not well,” Seteth whispers. “She has not been well for a long time.”

“She murdered me. I fail to see how her wellness is my problem. Are you sensible enough to run?”

“Yes.”

“And you?” Byleth asks Flayn.

Flayn gulps in a breath. “You are not giving us much choice.”

“Death is always a choice. Obey your father.” Byleth pushes Flayn into Seteth’s arms. “Go. If you ever come back to this continent, you had best be sure I’m dead.”

Hubert can’t say he’s pleased with the recent spate of enemies flying their way off the battlefield and well out of his reach. The wyvern and its inhuman cargo speed off towards Dagda or whatever lands lie beyond.

Ferdinand, ever sensitive, is crying, washing tear tracks through the blood and dirt on his face. Byleth stares off into the distance. 

* * *

It’s not until they’re safe within the monastery walls that Byleth cracks. To say they scream would be an overstatement; Hubert has heard the same sort of noise out of crushed throats, a cry muffled by barriers of swollen flesh -- or whatever it is that Rhea has done. Bernadetta flinches back, arms flying instinctively to cover her face. At that, Byleth would normally notice and gentle themselves. Now, they claw the Sword of the Creator off their hip. Hubert fears for a moment that the sword is going over the walls and into the void of the mountains. 

They hold it at arm’s length, their face something inscrutable. There is no one they can hand the sword off to. They make a muffled noise of disgust and march off towards the dormitories. Edelgard follows, mouth a grim line.

Bernadetta peeks out from between her fingers. “Are they…”

“Edelgard will take care of them,” says Ferdinand with as much surety as any of them can muster.

“Well,” says Dorothea into the silence that greets him. “I’m going to go wheedle some good wine out of Manuela. Party at my place? ...After we all clean up, of course.”

Hubert may be imagining the extent to which she directs that at Ferdinand’s gore-caked hair. The others give her a less-than-resounding chorus of agreement and set off for rooms and baths. Hubert decides himself a bit sweaty, but otherwise presentable. He stops in front of Byleth’s door and hears nothing. He stops in front of Edelgard’s door and hears the low murmur of voices, and so that is where he stations himself.

At least until Ferdinand comes up the stairs, scrubbing a towel over his now socially acceptable and viscera-free hair, and stops on the top step to stare at him. This is worse than the last time Hubert saw him without the trappings of coat, cape, and armor, layers pared down to nothing but trousers and soft shirt. The whole ridiculous situation is escalating.

“Are you going to stand there all night?” Ferdinand asks.

“Don’t ask stupid questions.”

He heaves a sigh. “Of course you are. Hubert, you have not even changed.”

“Unnecessary.”

Ferdinand loops the damp towel over his shoulders and regards Hubert for a long moment. It’s not that Hubert is unused to Ferdinand’s serious looks. The man is an idealist. Worse, he is an _ optimist _, the most trying breed of creature on the earth. But he is not empty-headed or ridiculous or without his own sort of cunning.

Hubert is just slightly -- just a touch -- unprepared to have Ferdinand level that considering stare at him like he’s a map or a chessboard. 

“At least take off your jacket.”

“No.”

“Or shall I go tell Lorenz that you are in need of company and conversation in this trying time?”

“If you can manage that without socking the man, I will give you a commendation.”

“Hubert.”

Hubert is much more tired than he thought. Or Ferdinand has laid a curse on him, and he is now a man possessed. Either way, he begins by unbuttoning his cuffs and does not end until he has shrugged his jacket off of his shoulders and folded it over one arm. But Ferdinand will not let a single act of madness settle the matter. He holds out expectant hands. Hubert can only claim morbid curiosity of the sort that saw him poking dead birds with sticks as a child. He gives Ferdinand his jacket.

Ferdinand rummages through the pockets, blithely ignoring several vials and Hubert’s expectant glare. He produces Hubert’s room key and steps down the hallway to unlock the door.

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” Hubert warns.

“I am almost entirely certain Edelgard would be upset with you if you murdered me.”

“Would you put those odds at sixty percent? Seventy?”

He does not want to leave his vigil at Edelgard’s door. Nor does he want to let Ferdinand rummage about in his room unsupervised. He _ wants _ to be irritated, and he is. Faintly. As he is irritated at a difficult problem before he solves it, or irritated at his enemies before they fall. There is satisfaction to be won here.

“Roughly eighty-two or thereabouts,” says Ferdinand. He has tipped Hubert’s door open but remains poised on the threshold. “At least take off your gloves.”

Like a child lured into a cave. Next it will be ‘at least take off your skin.’ 

Hubert ushers Ferdinand ahead of him into the room. “Touch nothing.”

Ferdinand hangs the jacket with fastidious care over the back of the chair and places Hubert’s key on the desk. Then he stands with a hand on his hip, taking in the scenery. It is neater than Ferdinand’s own room, Hubert knows, because Hubert does not get excited about things and faff off halfway through any of several acts of organization. Hubert has only moved the necessities to the monastery, in any case.

Why does he keep walking into bedrooms with this man?

Why, in point of fact, does he peel his gloves off and lay them on the desk next to his key, then spread his hands to Ferdinand with a mocking tilt to his head?

Whatever cause, Ferdinand’s own peculiarities must bubble up from the same sulfurous spring. He pulls the towel off of his neck and wraps it it first around one of Hubert’s hands and then the other, scrubbing sweat from each in quick succession.

Then the towel is thrown over Hubert’s head. 

Hubert lashes out, but his backhand hits empty air. Ferdinand’s breathless laughter comes from his right.

“Sorry -- sorry! No, do not -- no magic, Hubert, I am unarmed!” 

Hubert lets the darkness fizzle from his fingertips. “You were about to become un_ headed _, you blithering idiot!”

He pulls the towel away, straightening his shoulders to glower at Ferdinand from the most efficacious height. Ferdinand’s impish grin does not dim one whit. 

“Wipe your face and change your shirt, then come down and have a drink with us.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Whyever not?”

Hubert answers that with the withering stare it deserves. He gestures towards the wall he again shares with Edelgard.

“She is in the best hands possible,” says Ferdinand.

“They are upset.”

“All the more reason she is safe. Woe betide the tiniest flea that threatens Her Majesty this night.”

“They are _ compromised. _”

“I sincerely doubt that. And they deserve some time, do they not? How would you feel if someone were listening at your door while you were --” Ferdinand gropes about for the proper bit of vocabulary. 

“Compromised?”

“In need of a bit of privacy!”

“Well, they’re not going to get it if you don’t keep your voice down.”

“I will gladly keep my voice downstairs if you accompany me.”

“No.”

“I suppose I am staying here, then.”

Ferdinand turns and makes for the wardrobe. He is ridiculous. He is infuriating and childish. Hubert might have been persuaded to sit with him -- quietly -- as they both kept watch. But enough is never sufficient for Ferdinand, who considers every barrier a challenge to his rightful due. How he has decided that his ‘rightful due’ is Hubert’s time and attention, perhaps something he still thinks he can pry out of Edelgard’s hands? A victory, since empire and chess will never work out for him.

He opens Hubert’s wardrobe and pulls out a clean shirt, certain of his welcome despite running roughshod over every reasonable boundary.

“Get out.”

To some meagre credit, Ferdinand stills. He returns the shirt to its place and turns, tucking his hands behind his back in some still-dripping parody of a statesman. 

“You should come down and have a drink.”

“_ Out. _”

“Your officers are shaken. Today reminded them of how little they know. It would do them a great deal of good if one of you wandered down from your high tower of conspiracy and just...existed. Among them. _ With _ them.”

“Them,” Hubert sneers. “And what special knowledge do you suppose you have?”

“None. I have weighed my choices, and I only ask that you do not insult me by doubting my blind faith.” Ferdinand draws in a breath and cannot stop it from shuddering through him. “With knowledge, I could offer the others comfort and surety. In ignorance, we look instead to you.”

“Lady Edelgard will supply surety enough come dawn.”

“All right.”

Not the stubborn push-and-pull Hubert expects. He supposes it should be a relief. Instead, watching Ferdinand summon up a tired, wan smile is...difficult. Thankfully, he says nothing more before he goes, his footsteps receding across the hall and down the stairs.

Hubert changes his shirt. He wipes his face and neck with a perfumed towel, still damp, and resumes his post across from his emperor’s door. He does not sleep.


	5. And Not

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much everyone for all of the lovely comments! It's really a joy to read each and every one of them. I'm a bit of an awkward turtle so responding individually is difficult, but know that I read and re-read them and they really mean the world to this silly fanfic.
> 
> Minor content warnings in this chapter:
> 
> * Tipsy but consensual kissing that does nothing to alleviate that 'slow burn' tag
> 
> * Hot Life Tip: Do Not Get This Drunk, It's Miserable

Ferdinand is intercepted at the bottom of the dormitory stairs. Dorothea dumps a bundle of blankets into his arms and guides him towards the officer’s academy, of all places, with a hand on his elbow.

“I take it Hubie won’t be joining us?” she asks.

“If you desired his company, you should have asked him yourself.” Ferdinand is feeling sharp and sullen and suddenly tired. Why does Hubert always reduce him to a five year old who refuses to nap? “I am no silver-tongued maiden.”

She gives his arm a little pinch, sparing him her nails. “None of that, please and thank you. We’re alive! Come on, we could use a bit of your sunshine.”

“Is that what I have?”

They stop at her room to pick up the rest of her gathered supplies. Manuela has indeed come through. Ferdinand hopes someone else has been sent off in search of food, otherwise there won’t be much of a Strike Force left in the morning. Dorothea’s basket holds not just wine, but the sort of liquors that see grown men wander into ponds, mountains, forests, etcetera. 

She peers up at him. “He really did a number on you, didn’t he?”

“He did not --” Ferdinand sighs. “I cannot say I am pleased with our conversation, but today was...melancholy, that is all. Flayn was a friend, once.”

He cannot say the same for Seteth, who Ferdinand made a habit of avoiding. Inexplicable teenage cowardice, really. There was just something about Seteth that made Ferdinand feel assessed, measured, and found wanting. The few times he bulled ahead and attempted to start a conversation, Seteth refused to engage. It was the first time Ferdinand ever felt small; an important life lesson, in retrospect, but he still doesn’t understand why it was delivered.

“She was a good kid,” Dorothea murmurs. “Still is a good kid, I guess. Creepy. Can you imagine being caught like that, damned to the ingenue?”

There are a good many things Ferdinand could say to that. He’s more than glad he and Dorothea rooted out the misunderstanding plaguing their relationship, but he’s still trying to find the balance of their new friendship. There’s a little too much drama in them both, he thinks; they could easily set each other off chasing their own unhappy tails all night. 

“I think if I were stuck at fifteen, one of you would have smothered me by now.”

“Only a teensy bit.”

The others have gathered on the lawn in front of their old classrooms. There are, indeed, baskets of bread and cheese and whatever fruit could be pilfered from the various trees around the monastery. Ferdinand is proud of somebody’s forethought, at least until he sees who has joined them. He balks, boots stuttering against stone, at the vibrant flag of Lorenz’s hair. 

He doesn’t know that he has the wherewithal to not throttle the man today, and he would still feel guilty about it later.

“I should…” But Ferdinand isn’t sure what he  _ should _ , truth be told. He has already had the adrenal delight of survival shredded by a man he likes and respects; it is a bit beyond the pale to ask him to make a social retreat in the face of one he does not.

“Come on. We want Lysithea to be comfortable and he’s a familiar face, that’s all. I’m sure you boys can manage to stay ten feet apart, right?”

No doubt she will hold it against him if he cannot, and rightly so. He can be a gentleman, even through the recurring reminder of his shameful behavior and Hubert’s baffling response -- a response that supplied him with a great deal of unwarranted confidence. Best to let it all be water under the bridge, lest he give himself an ulcer trying to please his own hang-ups and Hubert all at once.

He helps Dorothea lay out the blankets on the lawn. He pulls off his boots. He takes a shot of something truly foul and then switches to mead. 

The ache of armor and axe fades in the wake of the alcohol’s burn. This shouldn’t be a habit he makes, this drinking, but at least this time he is being sociable. It would be much worse to, for example, stand in the hallway all by his lonesome straining his ears for the sound of grief, murder, or canoodling like some dire pervert.

He mentions as much to Dorothea, who only giggles at him for his perfectly reasonable use of the word ‘canoodling.’

She pats his cheek. “You’ll never find a bit of fun that way, Ferdie. I dare you to say fuck.”

“I fail to see a connection.”

He’s tipped back on his elbows, legs stretched out in front of him. He feels indolent and young and moderately drunk. Dorothea is warm tucked against his side, an excellent vantage point from which she watches Caspar and Petra playfully box one another for her very specific enjoyment. 

“How are you ever going to seduce someone?” she asks.

He frowns at her. “Poetry?”

“Oh boy.” She pats his thigh like it’s a friendly dog. “You really are virtuous.”

“That is hardly my fault.”

“Well! It’s also fixable.”

She straightens up, but it’s a tipsy sort of straightening. Dorothea is the soul of elegance even when inebriated, of course, and makes the sway of it a sort of dance. Or perhaps she hasn’t tilted at all, and that’s just Ferdinand and the mead. She takes his face between her palms, rough with the rigors of spellcasting, and tips his head back as she looms over him. There is enough space for a rejection; when it slips by unremarked, she bridges the gap between them and kisses him softly.

It’s a nice enough sort of thing, Ferdinand supposes, and he is theoretically  _ delighted _ to have his first kiss stolen away on a drowsy evening by a famous opera diva. He will enshrine that truth in his very soul.

Otherwise, he doesn’t think he would let Petra hit him for her, so there must be a core difference. 

Dorothea pulls back, the sharp wine on her breath still mingling with mead on his. She tilts her head.

“Thoughts?”

“Mm,” he says, hoping for something coherent and lyrical and coming up short. “Thank you?”

She laughs at him. Not her careful flirtatious laugh or her even more careful condescending one, but a real chortle ending in the most ladylike and delicate of snorts. She flops away from him, catching herself on her hands in a mirror of his pose.

“Caspar!” she calls across the lawn with her perfect pitch. “Come here a moment, please!”

Caspar trots over obligingly, Petra close at his heels. Over on another blanket, Linhardt is on his back surrounded by their various bottles and cups, tilting his head this way or that to observe his friends. Ferdinand meets his eye. Linhardt smirks. Ferdinand cannot imagine why.

“What’s up?”

“We’re conducting an experiment.”

“Yeah, what kind?”

Ferdinand honestly has no idea. Nor, he thinks, does Dorothea. If she has thought her clever plan through, there is no grand scientific revelation at the end of the tunnel. Which, really, is all for the better, as the whole affair of ‘science’ is out of his scope and the last thing he needs is Hubert hearing that they’ve made a mockery of it.

“Oblige me and give Ferdie a kiss?”

Caspar’s eyes flick between Ferdinand and Dorothea. He checks also over his shoulder; Linhardt has switched to lounging on his side, and he accompanies that smirk with a little ‘go ahead’ gesture. 

They really are strange, the lot of them.

“Does Ferdie want a kiss?” Caspar asks.

“Please do not discuss me as if I am a horse, particularly given the subject matter. I am not opposed.”

The first one was nice enough. And what does it matter? Who will see them? Lorenz, peering doubtfully at them as if attempting to gain shrewd insight into friendly nonsense? Hubert is unlikely to appear at some distant window, flinging it open to gaze down upon them with condemnation for their  _ silliness _ while he stands his solemn, completely unnecessary guard. 

Ferdinand killed seventeen people today. Why not a bit of silliness in balance?

“Well, alright then.”

Caspar drops to his knees on Ferdinand’s other side. Dorothea and Petra exchange some giggling, predatory glance. Caspar’s kiss is not eminently different from Dorothea’s. There are hands on Ferdinand’s face in the same sort of way, lips against his in the same careful manner. Were he brought into a darkened room and asked to guess which was which, he would have been well and truly baffled.

And yet, it is not a darkened room. He is distinctly aware that it is  _ Caspar _ who is kissing him. It is not something Ferdinand has ever contemplated at length, but Caspar is not an unattractive man. There is quite a bit to be said for how easily he hefts an axe.

Ferdinand tilts his head at what he imagines is a more correct angle. No one loses an eye in the process, so he cannot be far wrong. It is a longer kiss, a kiss with a tongue against his mouth and hands in his hair. When it ends, they each pull back a bit breathless.

“Holy shit,” Caspar pants. “I could  _ wreck _ you.”

Ferdinand blinks. “How do you mean?”

“What? Just -- just. You know! Wreck!”

“You are being extremely inspecific.”

“I --  _ excuse me _ ?”

Nearby, Linhardt is cackling. Caspar throws his hands up and retreats from the field of combat to put Linhardt in a headlock, which makes Ferdinand exceedingly glad he stopped to ask. Whatever they prefer to get up to, it does not look like his manner of...wrecking.

“You will be getting the hang of it,” Petra assures Ferdinand kindly. He has no idea what she means.

Dorothea pours him another drink.

* * *

The problem is thus:

He should have stopped drinking after the kissing, should have wallowed in that contentment and fallen asleep on the blanket. Unfortunately, he has decided that he likes being drunk. He likes not thinking too closely about war, or killing, or Hubert standing cold and lonely in a hallway, or Hubert’s hand on his wrist somehow incandescent through his glove.

He should not chase the feeling of  _ not-feeling _ like a terrier diving down an endless warren, snapping at rabbit heels. But he does, long past where he has been before, down and down beneath the safe layers of addle-brained ease.

Ferdinand feels a great many awful things at once. Most of them can be encapsulated in the way he throws up just barely over the edge of the blanket. He shudders, unsure of his own temperature.

Someone runs a soothing hand down the arch of his spine. Someone else hefts him to his feet, turning the world into an unpleasant kaleidoscope. 

“Alcohol can be tricky,” someone yet else is saying, “and it’s not my area of expertise. I’d hate to kill him.”

“You’re a sweetheart, Lin.”

“It’s best to come down from these things naturally. Manuela can take care of it.”

“You just don’t want him puking on you.”

“Also that.”

Ferdinand recognizes the size and general blur of Caspar propping him up on one side. When he tilts his head the other direction, it takes him a vexed moment to connect purple and roses to a person. 

“Hrngh,” he says, more or less, and makes a valiant attempt to tilt himself away from Lorenz.

“Stop that,” Lorenz scolds. “I don’t want you throwing up on me either. But it would be ungentlemanly to leave you in a heap, so off we go.”

‘Off where,’ Ferdinand does not manage to articulate. He concentrates on all of the million things he wishes to say in this instant, this unfolding hallway of instances. He pays very little mind to his feet. No one has put his boots back on, but he can hardly feel the stone. He is hardly a part of his body.

As Lorenz pulls and Caspar pushes him up to the top of a staircase, Ferdinand makes an oratory choice. It’s honorable to say it next to a staircase, he feels like. It’s honorable to give Lorenz something to tip him down.

“I am sorry,” he picks through his words carefully, though he cannot be sure how they sound when they make it out of him, “that I am not sorry. I have killed...many. Many, many people. She -- Bernadetta -- I would kill her again. I am sorry.”

Lorenz’s face swims into focus with some ferocious concentration on Ferdinand’s part. He looks like he’s bitten into a lemon, skin and all. Caspar keeps a hand on Ferdinand’s elbow. Ah, miscalculation: Caspar will not let Lorenz tip him honorably down the staircase.

“I accept both your apology and your lack of one. Please don’t speak of it again.”

“Done.”

Ferdinand would shake his hand, but Lorenz takes his other elbow and helps Caspar usher him to the infirmary. They lower him into a chair, then Lorenz retreats to fetch Manuela. Ferdinand tips his face into Caspar’s side and is rewarded with a hand petting through his hair.

“You okay there, bud?”

“I do not like this.”

“I promise you’re gonna like it less in the morning.”

“ _ Impossible. _ ”

A handful of minutes later, Manuela interrupts Caspar’s excruciatingly detailed description of a hangover. She shoos him off, leaving Ferdinand to slump over all on his lonesome.

“Hello, Ferdinand.”

He digs his palms into his eyes, desperate to blot out the sight of the room twirling lazily around him. “Manuela, I am dying.”

“Welcome to adulthood, sweetheart. Do you remember how much you had to drink?”

“Too much.”

“Well, you’re not wrong about that. Can you try to drink some water for me?”

He tries. He throws up again and tries again. Manuela putters around as he sips at his second glass of water, explaining something about recover spells and alcohol that mostly means he is, as Caspar might say, shit out of luck.

“How do you feel now?”

“Terrible. Did I mention that I am dying?”

“It happens to the best of us, I’m afraid. But you’re oriented and more or less coherent, so let’s just make sure you don’t choke on your own vomit.”

Ferdinand makes an offended noise. What an inglorious way to die. He drinks more water and watches Manuela pace the infirmary, which she keeps much cleaner than her own rooms. She was always his favorite of the teachers, the dazzling effects of her fame not-withstanding. So talented at so many things, and with such precise and clever diction! 

Byleth once told him his head was full of dandelion fluff and urged him to transfer to Manuela’s class if he ‘wanted to do nothing but peacock around.’ He gave it serious consideration but would not -- could not -- turn his back on the duties Black Eagle House implied.

He passed his next exam with flying colors and did not brag even one tiny syllable. Byleth bought him a new axe. Hubert marked the occasion by saying the first nice thing he ever directed towards Ferdinand: that he possessed a remarkably useful penchant for violence, considering the rest of him.

“Have you ever been in love?” Ferdinand blurts. Or, he assumes he strings those words together, since Manuela stops and traces her path back towards him, taking the chair across from his.

“My, you are drunk, aren’t you? Now where did that come from?”

“You are a treasure and you deserve it.” He punctuates his point with a firm nod that makes his head feel as if it’s about to go tumbling off his shoulders.

“I’ll agree to that much, but the logic doesn’t quite follow. Someone can  _ deserve _ something and still fail to have it.” She sighs. “Men are...difficult.”

Ferdinand has thought of men as a great deal of things, but never difficult. At least not in the generalization. Hubert can be exceptionally difficult. Or, more fairly, challenging. A puzzle. A difficult puzzle?

“Then why not -- ” Ferdinand attempts to make a gesture that encompasses the concept of ‘woman, or otherwise’ and gets nowhere near his goal. He frowns at his hand. “I remember you danced with Shamir at the ball. She called you beautiful.”

He should not have been watching so ardently, he knew even as an awkward teenager. But Manuela was a performer among performers, and the mere sight of it had almost summoned in him enough courage to ask Claude to dance.

It had not quite, luckily, or the marriage proposals would have been even more insufferable.

Manuela chuckles. “Oh, I remember that. Shamir was looking to get a rise out of Catherine.”

“Well, Catherine has run off in service of a very, very large dragon woman, so.” Ferdinand catches himself listing to the side and nearly topples when he overcompensates. “Carp the dim.”

“ _ Carpe diem, _ dear.” She sounds a bit tired, but she’s smiling, at least. “Something on your mind? Somebody?”

The worst thing about being drunk, Ferdinand decides, is the immediacy of it all. He knows, for he has been repeatedly told, that he wears his heart on his sleeve. He does not mind that his emotions are clear and forefront. He deeply dislikes being swatted between them like a half-dead mouse in the paws of a darling monastery kitten. In one moment, he is elated at the thought of Manuela’s inevitable happy ending. In the next, the mead that has replaced all of his vital fluids drags him down into a pit.

He might cry.

“A difficult man,” he tells her.

He never means to offend Hubert. Well. Sometimes he means to offend Hubert, when Hubert rightly deserves offending. But this time, he simply -- 

Ferdinand doesn’t mind being the shield of the empire. He is proud to be first in battle, proud to devote his life to politics in the service of others, proud to take care of his friends and his people with, he hopes, something approaching wisdom and compassion.

It just felt nice, that’s all: a hand on his wrist, a man perhaps not proud in his defense but certainly fierce. 

Hubert is not a hen looking for eggs to brood. He would not want to hear such things.

“Hush,” says Manuela, which is round about when Ferdinand realizes that he is, indeed, crying because he is, indeed, as drunk as he ever plans to be. “Let’s get you in bed. Here’s your medical tip of the day: drunks sleep on their sides.”

* * *

Ferdinand is, thankfully, still on his side when he awakens sometime later. The infirmary is awash in darkness, one candle glowing when he slits open an eye. He has not thrown up. He understands the relation of all of his limbs to his torso. He is grateful for both of these things.

Two figures just beyond the reach of the candlelight, and two voices to match.

“Something to sleep is all they request.”

“I’m proud of them for asking for help.” The sound of Manuela sorting through tonics. “Though I can’t imagine why they’ve sent you.”

Hubert clears his throat and ignores the question. “Is that Ferdinand?”

Ferdinand squeezes his eye shut immediately.

“Poor thing. I think Dorothea must have broken out the port.”

“Should he be taken back to his room?”

“...not tonight, I think. Let him get his feet back under him.”


	6. Solid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You all have left some EXCELLENT comments, thank you so much! Hard not to grin stupidly at my phone when I'm supposed to be Being Professional.

**Lone Moon**

Ferdinand wakes to a clear, sunny morning and the worst stomach cramps he has ever borne. Manuela, sweet angel of healing, left him a bucket. No one interrupts him while he tapers off into dry heaves. There are a handful of ribbons on the bedside stand; he ties back his hair until he can wash it yet again.

Manuela isn’t first by his bedside. Rather, Byleth swoops in from heaven knows where to shove a glass of something into his hands and lounge artfully in the visitor’s chair. They’re wearing a house robe that Ferdinand recognizes as Edelgard’s, and why not? It’s not as if they came tumbling out of the void with a full wardrobe. 

With all the faith and trust a soldier would put in a beloved general, he chugs what they’ve given him. It is, predictably, foul. He keeps it down through an act of sheer will.

“Eisner hangover cure,” they tell him.

“Delightful,” he wheezes.

“Not really. Is this going to be a problem?”

He drags himself upright against the thin infirmary pillows, determined to recapture some small scrap of dignity. He would give every last copper in his possession for a coat or vest, or even a cleanly pressed shirt. If his friends are kind, someone has rescued his boots from the lawn, but that does him little good in the moment.

Mustering up what little guile is available to him, he asks, “this?” 

“I’ve already given Manuela and Dorothea an earful.”

“They can hardly be held responsible for my bad behavior.”

“I was raised by an alcoholic. I’m not about to shepherd around an army of them.”

It’s the closest thing they have ever come to an emotional confession, at least in his hearing. They hand him the vulnerability carefully, gingerly, their lips pressed thin and their fingers twisted around one another. 

“I misjudged.”

“Hubert says he’s found you once before. Twice is a coincidence.”

“Three times a habit?” He reaches out and covers the tangle of their hands with his own, though it shakes a bit. “I misjudged, and not a word of falsehood there. I imagined I was drinking to celebrate, underestimating my own fit of pique. It shall not happen again, you have my word.”

They grasp his hand and give it a squeeze -- half affection, half terrible warning. “How mature. Where’d fluff-headed Ferdinand go?”

He’s not sure they’re joking, but his head hurts too much to respond with true sincerity. “Hubert tipped him out a window about three years back. Occasionally he still haunts these sacred halls.”

“Calling out his own name?”

Ferdinand clears his throat as if he can dislodge embarrassment. “Quite.”

“It may please you to learn that I’m going to tip Hubert out a window. You are welcome to watch.”

“Byleth!” He exclaims around a startled laugh. “Whyever would you do such a thing?”

They lean forward, almost-something in the set of their eyebrows and mouth. Speaking of fits of pique, Ferdinand thinks. 

“Imagine it. Consumed by grief -- ” their voice is perfectly flat “ -- I slipped out of our lady emperor’s room in the dead of night to fetch something to soothe our rest.”

“Oh. Oh  _ no. _ ”

“I nearly gutted him.”

“Poor Hubert.” If only he’d listened. Ferdinand allows himself a small measure of ignoble, spiteful satisfaction before he tidies it away. 

“Indeed, poor Hubert. Poor El, if we’d slaughtered each other on her doorstep.”

The nickname is dropped thoughtlessly, and it pools between them like mercury. Heavy and sure, but poison if Ferdinand were to take it in his own lungs. Nor is he silly enough to want to. Edelgard is his emperor. But Edelgard is also his friend, and it does his heart good to know that she has, impossibly, found Byleth’s soft places.

And the Eisner wisdom is doing his hangover good, as well. It is enough to rally his courage.

“Hubert and Her Majesty,” he ventures, voice low and soft, “they have told you everything, have they not?”

They frown. “What would your point be, if they had?”

If he says the wrong thing, they will slit his throat in Manuela’s infirmary. He relaxes against the pillows, tension he has carried for half a decade draining out of him like lifeblood.

“Only, thank you. I am not so dim a candle that I can fail to wonder at our circumstances.” The death of Edelgard’s family, her disappearance and return to the world with her hair bleached into bone, mysterious errands for her disquieting uncle. The Flame Emperor, the Death Knight, everything piled on and on that they’ve been asked to politely ignore for the sake of a future better than her past. “It brings me a most profound relief to know that there is another they can depend on. Rather, that they  _ will  _ depend on. I understand they have difficulties in that arena.”

“An understatement.”

Then Byleth does the most astonishing thing. They wrap their arms around his chest and pull him forward into a fierce and inescapable embrace, tipping his still-tender head against their shoulder. 

“Ah,” he says, articulately. 

They press a kiss to his temple. “You aren’t dim, Ferdinand. Be bulwark and guide, and I'll see them through the rest of it.”

If they notice him getting a bit teary on Edelgard’s robe, they don’t mention it.

* * *

Ferdinand takes yet another bath, the sick in his hair underscoring Byleth’s point. It is the dining hall’s watered down wine or nothing from here on out, he resolves. He isn’t sure whether he’s still irritated with Hubert. He isn’t sure whether he’s still irritated with himself, really, for wanting something Hubert has already sworn to Edelgard. There is no place for that sort of childishness in their war, and it is as Byleth said.

Bulwark. Guide. Ever facing forward. Those at his back look for danger in the shadows; he must be enough on his own. 

And even that’s a bit melodramatic of him, isn’t it? A bit too operatic for the truth of their circumstances. He has good soldiers and excellent friends. Too many people have taken blows for him, and here he is weeping that Hubert will not.

His boots have been left outside his door, not in a heap but tidily heel-by-heel against the wall. He changes. He puts on a well-loved coat, soft in the shoulders. He pulls on his boots, ignores the residue of his hangover gnawing at his every extremity, and walks the monastery. 

The horses are in fine shape. He helps the stablehands rebraid Last’s mane and gives them some tips on training Bernadetta’s new mount. With so much time on his hands, he pauses to quarter an apple and feed it to Hubert’s great black charger. The poor thing might not even have a name. Everyone simply thinks of him as Hubert’s terrifying horse, as far as Ferdinand knows. 

“Duke,” he tells the horse with a pat and a wink. Duke huffs at him and makes a valiant attempt to eat his hair.

Despite the night’s revelries, everything is in good working order. A full round of the monastery grounds reveals nothing more sinister than a cat fight, which Ferdinand breaks up as gently as he can with the toe of his boot and a reprimand for the cocky young tom. 

Perhaps he is doomed to converse only with the beasts, but he can think of worse days to have.

He ends up in the cathedral, though none of the doves wish to stop and chat. Byleth, driven by some ineffable whim, has again taken up the task of repairing the saint statues. Perhaps nostalgia, or perhaps a perverse thumbing of the nose at Rhea, a catalogue of fine things that are no longer hers. Ferdinand peers up at Saint Cichol, hands on his hips, and waits, as he has waited a dozen times before, for some spark of wisdom.

If their mission is not a holy one, why are the sainted so well represented among them? Only Macuil has failed to bless them. Edelgard would hardly approve of Ferdinand thinking so, but to say that Edelgard struggles with the church would be the immensely foolish sort of understatement. It has allowed too many bruises to blossom across the face of the continent, and it has never offered her balm or succor in her time of need. Ferdinand found peace and kindness in the chapels of his childhood; he fears Edelgard found them empty.

Rhea, of course, can kindly go suck an egg. 

“Do we even look alike?” he asks Cichol’s stern features.

“Strict bloodline descendancy is likely another falsehood, or there would be a great deal more crossover in the families representing the crests of Cichol and Cethleann.”

Ferdinand does not jump. His nerves have given up being startled by Hubert, it seems.

“You sound like Linhardt.”

Hubert sweeps across the room to stand next to Ferdinand, peering up at Cichol with a much greater measure of disdain. That he did not sleep is not obvious on his features. It is all bound to catch up with him someday.

“Don’t insult my ability to string a sentence together without wandering off in the middle.”

“Should I insult something else?” Ferdinand keeps a grin on his face and his voice light.  _ Here _ , it is all to say,  _ we are bickering again, all is well and right. _ “A little bird told me you might be more careful about sneaking up on people.”

“I would rather Byleth stab me than be up half the night vomiting.”

Ferdinand winces. “You are not wrong. Perhaps we could rehearse a middle ground, that on their wedding night you are taking tea instead of standing sentinel outside their door.”

“Already planning the wedding, are you?”

“It is inevitable. These past months, I have never seen a couple so fiercely in love.”

Hubert snorts. “You imagine it all unfolding so easily.”

“And why not? Edelgard has made little secret of her disinterest in a hereditary line, regardless of whether or not Byleth could contribute to the process.”

And woe betide any simpleton who thinks to ask. It is certainly none of Ferdinand’s concern, excepting his small kernel of envy at their sheer confidence in swinging from trousers and coats to Edelgard’s robes and smudged eyeliner. Perhaps he will wear flowers in his hair at their wedding. 

Hubert is giving him a funny sort of side-eye that Ferdinand dearly hopes doesn’t translate to ‘I can hear you thinking about flower garlands and a childhood spent desperately wanting to be Manuela.’

“In your imaginings,” Hubert asks instead, “do the people suffer it well?”

“Do try not to be so grim, Hubert. The people have cheerfully accepted Edelgard making heretics of us all, I doubt they will revoke their acclaim on account of us playing silly buggers with noble weddings.”

“Us?” Hubert echoes, making some very dubious angles with his eyebrows.

“You have not dragged me into the light of rebellion to tell me that you have arranged me a marriage, I hope. Bernadetta is darling, but she asks me to calm down at least twice a week.”

Fair, as she requests the same of Caspar nigh daily.

“As if I wouldn’t strap you to the back of a wyvern and foist you off on Petra.”

“Are you that irritated with me?”

“In the brief stretches of clarity that break through the madness of our association, yes.”

No wonder the Goddess condemns excessive drinking. To think he wept over this man’s tender regard as if it were real, rather than something Ferdinand cobbled together out of stress, romanticism, and the angle of Hubert’s cheekbones. He is lonely, he decides, and his better nature has refused to put the burden of that loneliness on Bernadetta. Hubert is simply the only other target, sans a willingness to get involved with the...larger shenanigans. Ferdinand’s fool brain has gone:  _ oh well, that one is available, and competent, and tall _ ,  _ there we go. _

“I did not mean to press you or upset you,” says Ferdinand, calm and low like he’s gentling a horse. “I apologize.”

There is no room for further justification. 

Hubert does not often fidget. When he does, it is a small thing. As now, when he rubs his thumb back and forth over the button of his opposite cuff. He glowers at the statue of Cichol so fiercely the saint is likely to bring word of his displeasure to the goddess and ensure the heavenly bureaucracy does something about it.

“Byleth is a formidable guard, but they are not immortal.”

“Are we sure?”

The glare snaps to Ferdinand. “Don’t joke about such things.”

Perhaps Ferdinand is grateful he does not see the whole picture of this war. Every sharp fragment of the mosaic draws blood.

“Joke rescinded,” Ferdinand assures him. “Yesterday, I only meant...many shoulders make a light burden. I should have stayed. I could have trounced you soundly at cards and felt much better this morning. Likewise, I believe there would be a great deal to be gained from you  _ and _ Her Majesty showing yourselves at a social event, perhaps sans Manuela’s liquor cabinet.”

In a stunning turn of events, Hubert’s expression has softened into something Ferdinand cannot quite parse. Confusion, he decides, as little as that fits Hubert. There is no other label to apply.

“Are you insinuating I’d be good for morale?”

“As loathe as I am to be the bearer of bad news when you are already cross with me, I must inform you that you are not as menacing as you imagine. Not to us.”

Hubert grumbles something under his breath, probably an appropriately sinister death threat, which is as good as him admitting he yields. 

* * *

Arianrhod falls, and Arianrhod falls again.

* * *

Ferdinand likes to think he’s gained a clear understanding of himself over the years, where he excels and when he falters. He achieves excellence through diligence rather than an innate quickness of thought, a long-burning lantern in contrast to Linhardt’s firework of a mind. And so what he does not know is thus:

Why it is Linhardt and he whose eyes meet over the gathered crowd as Edelgard declaims the crimes of the church. Of course Linhardt cannot be lied to in matters of magic, no matter how elaborate the scheme or twisted the tangle. For Ferdinand to share his surety, to have the same moment of swift clarity is a puzzle all its own.

Then again, too many years spent watching Edelgard too closely may have given him insight to the set of her shoulders, the turn of her mouth, the clench of her fingers around one another. Byleth is blank. Hubert nearly so. But Edelgard is ever too passionate a fire to be fully stifled.

If the others know, they say nothing. If the others think it would be foolish for the church to shatter a disputed city instead of Garreg Mach, instead of  _ Enbarr _ , they keep their silence. If anyone has an inkling that this tastes like specificity, like punishment, they tuck it away under layers of earnest agreement. Linhardt and Ferdinand share frowns, but no speech.

Punishment from whom, punishment for what. Ferdinand could make guesses. Ferdinand will not.

He shifts his gaze from Linhardt to Byleth. They do not flinch or fidget or share with him any iota of mutual understanding. 

Ferdinand is no great liar. If he is meant to be ignorant, he must maintain that ignorance in any way he’s able. Whose eyes are on him, whose ears listen, whose mouth speaks - best not to assume. Best to carry on, diligent, ready to be shield and sword in hand. If he is meant to be frightened, well. Edelgard’s secrets have achieved that much of their aim, to his shame.

He would have liked to have made it back to his room before the full force of it hit him, but he must tuck himself into a shadowed corner of the entrance hall and press a hand over his mouth. A city reduced to ash -- how many lives lost? What terrible calculus will they be hashing out tomorrow, columns and tallies wiped clean as if the soldiers they represented were mere chalk in truth?

_ Who _ and  _ what  _ and  _ how. _ And they all stay trapped behind his teeth, swallowed down.

When Hubert comes to find him a second time, there are no saints to smile down upon them. Ferdinand straightens all the same. The eyes of heaven or the eyes of Hubert: he will not suffer himself to vomit before either.

“We are close,” Hubert murmurs, his low voice hardly carrying in the echoing entrance hall.

“We are,” Ferdinand agrees.

“We are also close to losing Linhardt and Dorothea. I need you to keep them on this horse for awhile longer.”

Ferdinand cannot help but drag a hand through his hair, as telling as the gesture is, as messy. He shakes off a few clinging strands.

“I will speak to them.”

A truth that does not need speaking: the empire will lose both after the war. Whether Dorothea straps herself to a wyvern or a horse, goes with Petra to new wars or with Linhardt to however far Linhardt runs. That’s Caspar gone, as well. 

Will Bernadetta stay with them? Will Manuela, Shamir? Or will they be a raggedy empire of four, shored up by letters and memory?

Melodrama, Ferdinand reminds himself. Melodrama upon melodrama.  _ Stop it. _

“Her Majesty will arrange some sober social occasion in support.”

As a joke, it is anemic. Ferdinand chuckles all the same. If he will not accept humor bled bone dry, he is bound to start crying again. A general who cannot cease weeping and wailing at the walls like a ghost waiting for their lover to return is unlikely to be persuasive to their cause.

Hubert summons a fraction of his uneven smile. Heaven, but he looks tired. More has been chipped off of him than the saints. 

On impulse that may very well kill him, fueled by all that self-same melodrama and, yes, the shade of Hubert’s tired eyes over the angle of his cheekbones, Ferdinand reaches out. He is not immediately gutted when he takes hold of one of Hubert’s hands. Foolishness, maybe. Exhaustion, certainly. But a last resort - no, never that, and Ferdinand can at least be honest with himself.

Hubert allows Ferdinand to keep hold of his hand, allows the nonsense. He is perhaps just too busy staring at Ferdinand as if he’s sprouted another head out of the mess of his hair.

“I am here. I will remain. Her Majesty has my vow.” Ferdinand raises Hubert’s hand and presses a courtly kiss to the knuckles, lips against leather. “As do you.”

Hubert pulls his hand back, a slow slide of glove and skin. He pauses with it suspended between them as if unsure of its contamination now. 

Ferdinand has never retreated from the field of battle. In this, he allows himself more leeway. He needs a long ride, that he does not go in search of a long drink.


End file.
